This llama had already been haltered once by someone else, and that did make it easier. Here, Bobra isn’t having much trouble getting her hands on him.

Once she has her arms around the llama’s neck, she gives him a nice firm massage with her fingers, while talking steadily to him in a reassuring manner.

She’s got the halter in her left hand below, and the llama is leaning into her, seemingly enjoying the continuing neck massage.

She’s moved the halter to below his head. Bobra calls this the slow motion haltering technique, as she doesn’t rush any of the steps.

Now the halter is approaching his face. He knows what she has in mind, since he has been haltered before.

And here she is sliding it up over his nose, but not making contact with his face yet.

Now that she finally has it where she wants it, she lets it touch his face. She is still massaging his neck a bit and also talking to him.

In the last shot in this sequence,  she is continuing to massage as she moves the halter around the back of his neck. She will clasp it in a moment.

To see a similar sequence with another young llama — a more reluctant one — watch the 2+ minute llama training video on the homepage of this site.  It’s a short snippet from the two-hour program we made with Bobra.

This is where you can get  Living with Llamas: Tales from Juniper Ridge. It’s now available as a free downloadable ebook, in the common PDF format. Right-click here (or the Mac equivalent) to download Living with Llamas. Then choose “save link as” or “save target as” and choose where you want to put the PDF file on your computer.

This book is the story of Rosana and Kelly Hart’s adventures with llamas, from the coming of Levi and Tumbleweed to the running of a day-hikes business and developing a breeding herd.

What happens as Rosana opens to deeper telepathic levels of connection with the animals, and the crisis that occurs when a dream comes true, provide the final tales in a fast-paced book that will charm and inform animal lovers.

This classic has introduced thousands of people to llamas. Facts about llamas and their care are woven into the narrative. The later part of the book also discusses Rosana’s  increasing ability to communicate telepathically with their llamas.

You will need the free Adobe Acrobat reader to open it — you probably have that on your computer. If not, it’s at adobe.com.

You can also read it all online, here on this website, but without any of the illustrations in the ebook. Here are tips for reading  Living with Llamas online.

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Or if you prefer, you can still buy a copy of the paperback, while supplies last. We are down to our last few cases.

Living with Llamas: Tales from Juniper Ridge, by Rosana Hart. Book, 192 pages, $14.95 list price, OUR PRICE $12.00.

WHAT REVIEWERS SAID ABOUT LIVING WITH LLAMAS:

“While few may have the chance to live with llamas, many can take vicarious pleasure in following the author’s experiences, related with warmth and humor.” — American Library Association Booklist.

“A look into the warm, touching, friendly, and funny emotions of one couple’s developing relationship with llamas. Those who don’t have ‘llama fever’ can get some insight into what it is like. A must-read for anyone just getting into raising llamas.” — Llamas Magazine

AND READERS SAID:

“I cried, I laughed, I learned, and now I’m sold on llamas.”

“Received the book Friday afternoon, stayed up till 12:30 AM to finish it on Saturday morning. What more can I say?”

“Thank you for writing such a warm account of your life with llamas — I think, perhaps, if I hadn’t read it, I wouldn’t have my lovely llamas now!”

“We’ve read most of it twice — aloud to each other!”

“It is highly readable, filled with good info and very entertaining. It is really an asset to the llama world. I will refer back to it many times and will definitely offer it as a chief reference to interested people.”

“After checking out your book from the library simply to learn about how much upkeep would be involved, I immediately read it… front to back. Upon finishing, I knew I was about to embark on an adventure. Being a true city slicker prior to our move here, I look forward to having your book nearby when my “boys” arrive next spring. Thank you for the book and for starting our family on a wonderful adventure!”

“Living with Llamas is a beautiful little book, with delightful content embellished by humor.”

“Living with Llamas is so warm and real to me; I can’t tell you how much I enjoy reading and rereading all that you’ve written. I can sense your devotion and respect to an ancient and dignified animal.”

“We thoroughly enjoyed Living with Llamas. Besides the great photos, we liked the way you said what has been in our minds at one time or another but were afraid to say. We have all had hesitations and questions about our llamas but so often are afraid to admit we don’t know what we are doing. It is refreshing to see it in print.”

“Living with Llamas is a book I recommend for new llama owners. It is full of information, presented in a delightful story form.”

Living with Llamas: Tales from Juniper Ridge, physical book, list price $14.95, our price $12.00.

Category: Books > Llamas
ISBN 0916289230

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I submitted this ebook to some places online. Here’s my blog post listing some ebook directories, in case you’ve also written an ebook you want to publicize.

And here’s one: Jogena’s – eBook and eZine Directories – Get Listed Today!

– Rosana

Here you can watch a couple of minutes from the program we made with llama trainer Bobra Goldsmith:

Also, we offer you on this website:

1. Llama Training with Bobra Goldsmith: What Every Llama Should Know, a comprehensive two-hour DVD with a noted llama trainer.
2. An article on llama training.
3. Living with Llamas: Tales from Juniper Ridge is the story of our experiences, with a lot of information on llamas woven into the story. It has introduced thousands of people to llamas and is our all-time best-seller of all the books and videos that we have ever published. It’s available to read online here on this site. but better yet, it’s also now available as a free ebook that you can download.
4. Training Llamas to Drive, with Bobra Goldsmith, also a DVD.
5. Reviews of more books on llamas
6. Llama t-shirts
7. Tips on how to create your own t-shirts, with llamas or whatever on them
8. Resource page of a few of the other top llama websites and llama training websites

A friend feeds our llama Lil Bit while Posey looks on

]]> http://www.llamas-information.com/home/feed/ 0 http://www.llamas-information.com/llama-training/llama-training-dvd/ http://www.llamas-information.com/llama-training/llama-training-dvd/#comments Wed, 15 Apr 2009 23:26:48 +0000 Rosana http://llamas-information.com/llama-training/llama-training-2/

Can you handle your  llamas? It’s a great feeling to know that in an emergency, or anytime, you can work with your llamas.  Llama training gives you this confidence.

Or–if you don’t have llamas but are thinking of it–would you like to know how to do these things?

You can learn a tremendous amount about llama training from this DVD, Llama Training with Bobra Goldsmith: What Every Llama Should Know. (A lot of people considering llamas have bought copies.)

Noted llama trainer Bobra Goldsmith has been training llamas for over 25 years. Her close attention to their behavior led her to develop training methods which are easy to use and respectful of the animals.

Now you can watch a couple of minutes of this video, right on the homepage of this site: Llama Training Video

Often llamas understand what you are asking of them after you have shown them only a few times. Once they understand, they tend to remember, much more quickly than dogs, for example.

Llamas are smart! Llama training can be tremendously enjoyable because of this. Bobra calls her workshops “Training Llamas for Willing Cooperation.”  Bobra and many alpaca owners have also used these techniques for training alpacas.

Would you like to try her techniques?

In just a few days, using Bobra Goldsmith’s llama training techniques, many people have trained llamas to:

• accept a halter
• walk easily with a lead rope
• load into a vehicle
• and perform other tasks.

We offer you the acclaimed two-hour program, Llama Training with Bobra Goldsmith: What Every Llama Should Know.

We — well, mostly my husband Kelly Hart — produced this program, and we’ve sold hundreds of copies to llama owners all over the world at $65. Now we sell it as a DVD. Do note that since it was shot before digital video, the visual quality is not as good as it would be now. But the information is excellent.

This DVD retails for $39.95 but if you type in (or cut and paste) 82R2625S in the box for Discount Code, you get our internet price of $29.95.

“The program with Bobra Goldsmith has made an enormous impact on our training abilities. I am now able to halter and lead my llamas. I can’t say enough about this. It is incredible…

“I recommend it to everyone with llamas. It is a godsend to me. I tried so many things to get close to my llamas, but nothing worked till now. I am in heaven!!!”

–Linda Hann, USA, 2002

Proven Tips, Tools and Tactics for Training Llamas

On this DVD, Bobra provides information about llama training:

• specific methods for initial contact
• her “slow motion” technique of haltering
• leading with a light hand
• loading into vehicles
• kushing
• developing trust and willingness.

She works with both juvenile and adult llamas, including an untrained adult.

Bobra Goldsmith’s methods have been highly respected in the llama community for many years. She has been a mentor to many of us.

“Pioneer llama trainer Bobra Goldsmith… inspires with her words, sensitivity, and common sense wisdom.”

–Llama Life

“We don’t let anyone in the pens without viewing at least half the tape, so they can understand about how their own movements affect the llamas, the need to talk to them quietly, etc.”

– Llama owners, USA

Now available — only in DVD! This DVD retails for $39.95 but if you type in (or cut and paste) 82R2625S in the box for Discount Code, you get our internet special price of $29.95.

It’s also available through Amazon.com but not with our $10 off deal. Still, they give free shipping and it’s handy : Llama Training with Bobra Goldsmith

Click to see the  table of contents for Llama Training with Bobra Goldsmith.

The legal stuff: handle and train llamas at your own risk.

You can benefit from Bobra’s years of llama driving experience. Topics include preparing the llama for driving, fitting the harness, the first driving lesson, the touch of the reins, ground driving, introducing the llama to the llama cart, riding in the llama cart, and safety. This program is rich in details.

We had no idea what the market would be when we made it, but it has sold very well. Bobra’s enthusiasm for llama driving is infectious!  It was originally made as a video but is not available in that format any more.

This DVD retails for $39.95 but if you type in (or cut and paste) 82R2625S in the box for Discount Code, you get our internet price of $29.95.

“As a training video, it is unparalleled. As a teacher, Ms Goldsmith is supreme.”-Llamas Magazine

Contents of the DVD

Times are in hours and minutes.

0:01 Introduction: goals in training and factors in choosing a llama.

0:08 PREPARING THE LLAMA FOR DRIVING
Catching routine and leading along the expected route.

0:11 FITTING THE HARNESS FOR THE FIRST TIME
Function and nomenclature, while showing the proper fit on a llama.
0:28 Removing the harness.
0:29 Proper fit of girth in relation to the llama’s legs.

0:31 THE FIRST DRIVING LESSON: LEARNING “WALK” AND “WHOA”
The helper’s role, and that of the driver, in ground driving.
0:32 Choosing a route.

0:35 A TECHNIQUE FOR LEARNING THE “TOUCH” OF THE REINS
0:37 Signals for control: reins, voice, and whip.
0:39 Example of initial ground driving to teach commands.
0:42 Length of lesson, and initial turning lesson

0:43 GROUND DRIVING ALONE: DEVELOPING FLEXIBILITY & OBEDIENCE
0:44 Training the llama to jog.
0:46 Developing the light touch on the reins.
0:48 How to hold the reins and whip.
0:51 Use of tugs or rings to keep reins low on a naughty llama.
0:54 Use of safety line. Practicing diagonals and circles.
0:55 Jester gets naughty and needs discipline.
0:58 Three commands: Stand, Easy, No.

1:01 INTRODUCING THE LLAMA TO THE CART FOR THE FIRST TIME
Attributes of various carts.
1:05 Hitching a cart to the llama: order of events.
1:10 Procedure for unhitching.
1:13 Example of initial introduction of llama to cart.
1:21 Using pole with a llama who is afraid of, or naughty about, the cart.
1:24 Using “fifth wheel” device for llamas who want to avoid the cart.

1:27 RIDING IN THE CART THE FIRST TIME
1:29 Walking behind the cart, with an assistant.
1:30 Getting into the cart the first time, with assistance.
1:32 Assistant joins driver in the cart.

DRIVING ALONE AND WITH OTHER LLAMAS
1:33 Where to drive: arena or parking lot.
1:35 Using a safety line and ground driving behind the cart.
1:36 Getting into the cart, still with the safety line.
1:37 Practicing the commands, speeds of travel, and praising the llama.
1:40 Practicing backing by standing in front of the llama.
1:42 Working around other llamas. Attributes of 4-wheel carts.
1:46 Balance of discipline and fun for the llama.

INTRODUCING THE LLAMA TO A NEW CART
1:48 Proper angle of the shafts; meeting horses.

1:49 DRIVING COMPETITION AT THE DENVER STOCK SHOW

1:56 FINAL COMMENTS
1:57 Credits

This DVD retails for $39.95 but if you type in (or cut and paste) 82R2625S in the box for Discount Code, you get our internet price of $29.95.

I found it hard to believe that they were only two weeks old. Their ears moved in the direction of any sound, and their faces already seemed to express ancient wisdom. Balzac looked at us from beside his mother.

Kelly and I were choosing our first llama. We watched Levi nurse from a black llama with a white neck.

“That’s Fancy, his mother,” Sally said. “His father, Rama, is away right now, being used for breeding. Like Levi, he’s appaloosa. We think Fancy and Rama are outstanding in looks and intelligence. We gave Levi his name because he has such good genes.”

Kelly preferred Levi’s pattern of spots, and I liked his name. Spots and a name were funny reasons to select a llama, but Sally knew far more about llamas than we did, and we trusted her evaluation that either young llama would suit our needs. We chose Levi.

Sally loved her animals–I could tell from the gentleness with which she handled them. She and her husband Paul had begun with two llamas a few years ago, and now had a large herd. “I come out and watch them whenever I can,” she said. “Sometimes I’m out here for hours. They’re such social animals, there’s always something going on. Look in the field by the barn.”

A dozen llamas were clustered together. “There’s a week-old llama in the middle of the herd,” Sally said. “We just put her and her mother in with the main herd, and the other females are curious.” I could scarcely see the baby, as the llamas were all trying to sniff her. My eyes returned to Levi.

“I’m sure you’ll enjoy Levi,” Sally said. “What made you get interested in llamas?”

“It just seemed to happen,” Kelly replied. “Before we moved to Oregon, I picked up a brochure about going packing with a group called Shasta Llamas. Rosana was working in the library in Santa Rosa then, and she came across a book called Along Came a Llama. We both read it, and were impressed with the intelligence and sensitivity of the animals.”

Next we went to see some llamas, just for curiosity, a pleasant outing for an afternoon. That day we realized that llamas could be useful to us, for packing and for wool.

“That’s how we became interested,” I said, “but I’m still puzzling over why.”

My background had very few animals in it. I had grown up in an academic family, with my nose in a book. The book might be an animal story, but throughout my childhood I would walk several blocks out of my way to avoid large dogs. I studied anthropology in college, became a probation officer and later a librarian, taught self-hypnosis and time management, and traveled around the world.

Kelly had at least grown up in a rural area. There were sometimes sheep or cattle on the land his parents owned. He grew up to work in film and video, play jazz saxophone, and do carpentry. He loved plants, animals, and inspiring views.

In our life together we evolved a style which was in some ways close to the land, and in other ways rushed and urban. We raised gardens and chickens. We lived by the ocean and later in an old summer camp set in apple orchards. While I worked in a busy public library system, Kelly made films and obtained a patent on a method of animation.

We were living in a trailer, situated on seventy undeveloped acres in the rugged mountains of southern Oregon. We had just moved there, and were putting in water, electricity, and a garden. The land was steep and dry, reminding Kelly of southern Idaho where he had grown up. At its highest point, there was a ridge along which a wonderful assortment of wind-swept juniper trees grew, so we named the land Juniper Ridge. The urban amenities we craved were just twenty minutes away, in Ashland, a town which combined the friendliness of rural Oregon with the sophistication of being a world-renowned theatrical center.

It would be a good time to bring llamas into our lives. What might we learn from them? Like dolphins and elephants, llamas seemed to have an intelligence very different from our own. Was there a possibility that we would develop a greater sense of harmony with nature from living with llamas? We hoped so.

We would have to wait six months for Levi to grow up and be weaned from his mother before he could come to us. As we left the Taylor’s ranch, I felt the same excitement mixed with unreality I had felt when we bought our land. Dreams coming true generally led to surprises–usually pleasant–and more dreams. Levi would be our llama, and I wondered what it would really be like. We planned to get another llama to keep Levi company; maybe we would even have a whole herd.

Would our dogs get along well with Levi? Martha, now thirteen, was happy to spend long hours under the kitchen table, becoming alert chiefly when food appeared. I didn’t expect her to pay much attention to llamas.

Cider would. A Rhodesian Ridgeback puppy just a few weeks older than Levi, she was growing into a long-legged, large dog, loving to run. She was of a breed developed in Africa to hunt lions. Sometimes Martha let Cider attack her, but we were Cider’s main playmates.

Sally sent us photos of Levi; he gazed at us from the refrigerator door, along with a Peruvian postcard of a llama herd which my father or grandfather had picked up in their travels over the past fifty years, little imagining that llamas would become a topic of intense interest to their descendent. I was sorry they had both died before I could ask them about it.

After hugs and hellos, we coaxed our new llamas out of the van by tugging on the lead ropes attached to their halters. The light breeze lifted their fuzzy wool, and the late afternoon sun made shadow patterns on it. The llamas looked around.

Our dogs investigated the newcomers. Cider, the puppy, jumped on Ajila and ran long-legged circles around the llamas, inviting them to play. They watched her. Martha, the ancient one, surprised me by barking and trying to nip at the llamas’ back feet. They watched her too, and deftly stepped out of her way.

Ajila was exploring. We had moved since her last visit, and it was all new to her. “Wow, what a view!” she said, looking south to where snow-covered Mount Shasta, some fifty miles away, was gleaming.

“Which is our land?” she asked.

“Let’s walk up to the ridge with the llamas–we can show you better from there.”

Kelly and I were each holding one llama’s lead rope. Both llamas walked easily on lead, sniffing at each other and us, leaning over for a mouthful of one plant or another. The dogs came along, Martha growling intermittently at the llamas.

“Kelly, the llamas are really here! Both of them!”
“Yes, I was so pleased when Sally said she’d sell Tumbleweed too. Hey, they’re pointing their ears forward, maybe because of the squirrel under the juniper tree. They sure do watch things.”

Levi sniffed my shoulder. Tumbleweed stayed further away from us. He seemed to be more adventurous about exploring new places, as he went along the ridge from one snack to another. Kelly followed at the other end of the rope. The two llamas were already showing differences in personality. I liked how each of them blended calmness and curiosity.

Kelly showed Ajila the boundaries of our land. From the ridge, the cliffs dropped down to a flat meadow. “We like to hike there,” he told Ajila. “We have sixteen acres below the cliffs, including a place we call the Magic Place. We’ll take you there. We’re planning to live on top here–we are still thinking about what we want to build. There will be llama sheds right near it.”

Ajila looked at the panoramic view of mountains, turning luminous as the sun set. “Sure is different from Louisiana,” she drawled.

As the evening progressed, I kept popping out to the llama yard, to watch how the llamas sat down or stood up or had a drink of water. Once Levi rolled over on his back–to scratch it, I surmised.

The llama yard had been the dog yard; now the dogs were in the trailer, where they much preferred to be, and for now the llamas had a space the size of a small suburban back yard, sloping up the hill by the trailer. A large juniper tree provided shade and nibbles. A few bushes provided more nibbles, and there was some grass.

The main course was hay, in and around a cardboard box. I had brought the hay home in our tiny station wagon, carefully arranging it so I could fit three bales in. Munching hay, the llamas seemed right at home. Soon we would build a llama shed, fence a larger pasture, and buy a pickup truck.

Ajila considered her choice of accommodations. The tiny second bedroom in the trailer was already my office, so we offered her our camping tent, pitched on a flat place next to the llama yard, or the van in which she had arrived. She chose the tent, and neatly arranged her things in it. Cider slept with her in the tent, an arrangement which didn’t last past the second chewing of our good down comforter.

Kelly and I walked up to the ridge. There was a breeze, as usual; our land was on a mountain pass, so if the wind wasn’t blowing from California, it was usually blowing from Oregon. This evening it was blowing from the south, appropriately, I thought, considering what had just blown in from California.

The western sky was still glowing as we strolled hand in hand. As we came back toward the trailer, the llamas were sitting with their legs tucked under them. Levi’s ears were forward; Tumbleweed’s were back.

“I thought ears back was an aggressive signal,” Kelly commented, “but Tumbleweed keeps his that way a lot. While I was driving, I watched the llamas in the rear-view mirror, and his ears were back most of the time.”

“He hardly looks aggressive now,” I said. He and Levi were gently chewing.
We could see them from our bedroom window. I woke up several times during the night and looked out, but there was no moon and nothing much was visible. At first light I woke again and peered out. Levi was sitting tucked up, and he was looking at me. I was thrilled. He didn’t miss a beat as he chewed his cud.

But it was the same kind of uncertainty. What did we need to do for them? What should we allow them to do, and how to train them to do what we wanted and not what we didn’t want? There were only a few magazine articles and the one book I’d already found to guide us.

One afternoon, I watched Levi and Tumbleweed chase each other around the yard, biting knees and necks and ears. I worried that they would hurt each other, and ran to phone another llama breeder. “It’s good exercise,” he assured me. “They won’t grow fighting teeth until they are just over two years old. Don’t worry.” Fighting teeth, on the sides of the llamas’ mouths, were very sharp. They were removed by llama owners who kept males in the same pasture.

We staked the llamas out to graze among the rabbit brush and other high-desert vegetation on our land. By staking Levi and Tumbleweed at various places, we could provide them with munchies and diversion, and they could be our roving lawn mowers. We attached them by twenty-foot ropes to cinder blocks or to trees. I wondered if they would nibble on their ropes, as Cider did on her leash; they didn’t. We stopped using cinder blocks, though, after Levi dragged one a third of a mile, to where Tumbleweed and I were going for a walk without him.

Whenever we staked them near our half-completed septic tank installation, one llama or both climbed the mound of dirt beside the tank. They would stand there, gazing majestically at everything around them: passing cars, forests, mountains, clouds. Alert to sound and movement, they stood.

Now and then one would tangle a rope around a tree or some bushes; or if we let them graze close together, they would intertwine their ropes. Then they would just sit down, and soon one of us would notice and straighten them out.

We checked on them frequently, leaving our ranch work, or wandering outside if we were in the trailer. They didn’t need checking–tangled lines quickly became rare–but we had become as curious as llamas. I would be writing, or planning a class, when I would have to find out what they were doing. I felt as though beings as magical as elves or unicorns had come to live with us. What did they think about? What is thinking for a llama? What kinds of emotions did they feel? Did they have a sense of humor? I wondered and watched.

“It’s the Lee and Tee Show,” joked Kelly as he came upon me gazing at the llamas. Lee and Tee stuck as nicknames.

Kelly looked up from his reading one afternoon and saw Levi walking past the trailer, unconstrained by any lead rope. The llama was wandering slowly up toward the ridge, nibbling here and there. Kelly followed in what he hoped was a casual manner. Levi seemed to be enjoying his freedom, quite aware that something was different. He leaned over to nibble, and Kelly grabbed him. Levi didn’t seem to mind. It wasn’t to be our last loose llama.

Posey moved around sideways until she was looking out the back window. I was surprised that few motorists noticed.

One car did pull up next to us. “What’s that, a goat?” hollered the driver.

“A LLAMA!” Kelly and I chorused. The fellow grinned.

We arrived home late in the afternoon. I later heard from a llama-owning friend that she too had transported llamas in the back of a small station wagon. She stopped doing it after a female tried to stand up and broke the back window. We decided just to use our van.

As we took Posey out of the car, both males were at the edge of their yard, eagerly watching. Posey saw them right away, and stood up very tall. Since we hadn’t planned to come home with a llama, we didn’t have a second fenced area. We tied Posey to a tree.

Posey didn’t like being tied up. She ran around and around, lunging to the end of her rope. Like the males, she learned very quickly, and within five minutes she knew how far she could run. Then it seemed less that she was alarmed, and more that she was just frisky. After a while she settled down.

“We’ll take you out to dinner to celebrate your new llama,” offered the friends who had been llama-sitting while we were away. I wanted to stay home with Posey, but everyone else went out to eat.

It was still warm after the hot day. I sat on the steps of the trailer, watching Posey. What a lovely creature she was, grazing there, and what a turn our lives were taking. A year ago we had been waiting for our home in California to sell, hoping that the third would-be sale wouldn’t fall through as the others had, hoping that we would be able to buy this land in Oregon. Now I was not only a country homesteader, but a genuine llama breeder as well.

Astonishing, wonderful–and also puzzling. Kelly and I had made a series of decisions over the years, as anyone does, about where to live, what work to do. Somehow our decisions had led to this moment. Here I sat, enjoying the evening, feeling the peacefulness of being a solitary human surrounded by land, trees, and animals. I was a contented little speck in the panorama of mountains, surprised at how naturally my city-bred self had come to love this solitude.

Living with llamas was good for my maternal impulses. I enjoyed being a mother hen, or rather a mama llama.

My newest charge was grazing a little, watching the other llamas, watching me. A thunderstorm was building, far to the east. As the noise of the thunderbolts increased, Posey began running around again.

I went down by her tree and took her rope in my hand, then very slowly moved toward her. She trembled a little as I approached, but as before, once I was close, she nuzzled me and seemed glad of the comfort. We had a long tete-a-tete, only broken when a loud thunderclap sent her scurrying.

The storm didn’t seem to bother Levi or Tumbleweed; they were just standing around. After several bright lightning flashes from the eastern horizon, Levi stared steadily in that direction.

I decided to put Posey in the llama yard and stake out the males. She couldn’t be in with them because we didn’t want her pregnant. It was unlikely that she could be yet, or that these young males could do the job, but we didn’t want to risk it.

Levi was easy to catch, but Tumbleweed eluded me. He could run faster than I, and he wasn’t in the mood to be caught. I tried maneuvering him between Levi and the fence, a trick which often worked, but Tumble wasn’t having any. Frustrated, I gave up until the others returned.

The males liked being staked out, so long as they had good grazing around. We kept them staked for three days, while we fenced another area, making sure that somebody was home all that time. The llamas wouldn’t be able to run away from any dogs that came along, and we knew that dogs could be dangerous. As it happened, an unfamiliar dog did wander in. The males watched it intently; it didn’t get as far as Posey’s field. It was old and gentle, and left when our dogs barked.

We used six-foot field fencing for the new, larger llama field, even though many llama owners put up fences of four feet. They probably didn’t have four feet of snow or drifts seven feet high. The wire mesh of the fence kept out a porcupine that came by, and we were glad. Our llamas liked to investigate strange new things by putting their noses close and sniffing.

Dan phoned the day after we brought Posey home, to hear how she was doing. After I filled him in, I asked him about something Kelly had noticed. Posey seemed nervous around our dogs. The funny thing was that she was more upset by lazy old Martha than by lively young Cider.

“She has good reason to be watchful around dogs,” said Dan. “When she was just a few months old, some dogs from the neighborhood got into the llama pasture. They chased her and another young one very roughly. They didn’t hurt Posey, just scared her–but they injured the other little one so badly that we had to put it down.”

“Do you know what the dogs looked like?”

“I didn’t see them, but I’d guess from Posey’s behavior that they looked something like your old dog. She’ll settle down, though, don’t worry. After that incident, we moved her up to Tom and Toni’s place. They have a dog up there, and after Posey had seen it a few times, she was fine with it. These dogs of yours may be the first ones she’s seen since then. She’s smart, she’ll learn fast that it’s okay.”

Dan was right; soon Posey became accustomed to our dogs. She reversed her reaction to them, becoming indifferent to old Martha but vigilant toward Cider’s exuberant movements. She and Cider sometimes sniffed noses through the fence.

Posey and the male llamas spent hours staring at each other across the fences. We wondered if she was lonely, but loneliness wasn’t really the issue in the way she watched Levi and Tumbleweed. It was the great drama of being male and female.

The first morning that Posey was here, Kelly took Levi, on a lead, up to her fence. The two llamas sniffed noses through the fence, and then Posey made a loud snorting sound she had been making at the males. She raised herself up very tall. Levi put his neck down low, and flipped his tail onto his back, indicating submission.

When we took Tumbleweed over, he and Posey went through the same routine. Kelly took Tumble into Posey’s field, still on lead. After a while they quit the display, and stood around near each other, doing nothing in particular.

Male llamas are used for packing, but the females are generally kept home to have the best conditions for pregnancy. Once females reach adulthood, they’re pregnant most of the time: a female carries her young for about eleven and a half months, and is usually bred again within two or three weeks after delivery.

Posey was still too young for such things. Female llamas were typically bred for the first time when they were between a year and a half and two years old. While we waited for her to grow up, we enjoyed taking her on walks. She liked to nibble. Her favorite stop was at a small maple tree on an unused dirt road we called Llama Lane. If she failed to munch a few maple leaves on the outward journey, she never missed them on the way home.

When I wore a bright orange tee-shirt with a large appliqued flower, Posey leaned over and sniffed the flower several times as we strolled.

We took her out for walks with one or both of the males. They would do their usual courtship activities, the males walking along with low necks and flipped-over tails, Posey walking with her back legs wider apart. We called it “junior high dance time.”

Ajila and her friends, camped out in the tent next to Posey’s field, discovered that when they played loud rock music, Posey came over to the fence and peered in at them. If someone approached the fence quickly, Posey would run away quickly; she seemed always poised to retreat. But if they approached slowly, she might favor them with the softness of her alfalfa-scented breath.

Posey was fond of one of our guests, a man with dark hair and a dark beard. She would approach him surely, linger next to him. We wondered what his charm was–and then remembered that Dan, Posey’s former owner, had brown hair and a dark beard.
That made us realize just how much llamas can tell different people apart. We had noticed that if we walked up to the fence with a guest, any of the llamas would pay more attention to the newcomer than to us.

If we had food in our hands, we received the attention. Sometimes I put a little grain in my hand when I caught a llama. It was a mixture of corn, barley, and oats, held together with molasses. We called it llama granola, and it was as popular with our llamas as human granola was with us.

One woman who came to visit was captivated. “I had no idea llamas were so approachable,” Char said, as Posey blew on her cheek.

“Would you like to help me comb her?” I asked, feeling a little like Tom Sawyer with the bucket of whitewash. I had been meaning to comb her for weeks.

“I’d love to!” said Char, and so we did, using a dog brush to pull out the loose wool, stuffing it into our pockets. We took turns combing, while the other one diverted Posey with nuzzles and kisses. Her wool was long and soft; it was a pleasure to sink a hand down into her thick coat.

In the dusk, we strolled up to the ridge with Posey. The lights of cars on the freeway about a mile away caught her eye, and she stopped. She watched the lights for a long time. We continued up to the top of the ridge, and she stood erect, silhouetted against the pink sky and distant mountains. Her attention was still on the lights. My attention was on her, my heart full of appreciation for this regal being.

I was reading a book called Llama Training: Who’s in Charge? at the time, and it called llamas companionable rather than affectionate. That struck me as an apt description. Our three enjoyed being around us. They watched whatever we were doing. Their curiosity seemed endless. They liked walking with us, we knew, as their entire bodies would express interest: ears forward, heads turning from side to side, tails perhaps lifted a little.

We did a lot of communicating by looks. I had wondered if looking a llama in the eye would have the aggressive overtones it did with a dog. It seemed that it could at times, but there was a lot of eye contact going on between the llamas and us, and none of our three seemed to take offense. The times of eye contact seemed to me times of communion, but I didn’t know if the llamas interpreted them in the same way.

In exasperation, I wrote:

LEVI AND I
We see eye to eye.
I cry oh Levi why can’t we talk?
We can only walk,
Walk and look, and see eye to eye.

I recited it to him, in the new barn. He listened. At least he didn’t tell me I should have tried iambic pentameter.

Some of my most peaceful moments were the ones I spent alone with the animals. Long afternoons passed dreamily, while I worked in the garden or cleared brush, looking up now and then to watch a llama or look at subtle changes in the mountain view.

On a sunny afternoon, I pulled nails out of old barn wood, working right next to Posey’s field. The old wood was from an early settler’s shanty, now collapsed in the valley below us, too fragile to use for anything but decoration. We were going to cover Posey’s shed with it. Kelly and Ajila were in town. The sun was warm, but the wind had a bite to it. Distant Mount Shasta was showing white further down her flanks than she had before the recent rains.

My mind gradually loosened up, and in the late afternoon there came over me a delicious sensation of being totally in the present, feeling in harmony with the llamas and the mountains, in harmony even with the stubborn nails. It was a familiar experience, though rare. I was most likely to feel it when I was alone and outside. It may be what turns people into devoted gardeners.

Cider was running around and Martha was lying up against Posey’s fence. Posey was sitting near me, watching me carry boards. The cat walked by. In my serene state, I thought about telepathic communication with animals. My experiences of it were limited to a few times when one of our dogs responded to my thoughts. Even then I was reluctant to say that it was telepathy, for possibly I had given clues without realizing it.

Occasionally I experienced telepathic connections with other people. If I were to try tuning into the llamas, would there be a way I could know whether I was really sensing what a llama was experiencing? I didn’t know. Llamas were so very different from humans.

In college, I majored in anthropology because of my fascination with the varied ways of life that humans have developed. My interest in llamas stemmed from the same root, a branch further out on the same tree. I didn’t want to go out on a limb, but I kept thinking, what is it like to be a llama?

When I studied anthropology, I saw how easy it was to project the attitudes of one’s own culture onto people in other cultures. So too I could see that it would be easy to attribute human characteristics to the llamas.

Yet there was a lot of common ground. Many of their experiences were similar to ours: the pleasure of eating, the importance of companionship, feelings of fear, curiosity, aggression.

Observing llamas, and reading about the observations of other people, was how we had learned most of what we knew about them. I wasn’t eliminating the possibility of telepathy, but for now I wanted to focus on what I could observe. We already knew that llamas had a number of ways of communicating. We heard them use a variety of sounds. We saw that head, neck, and tail positions had meanings.

Gelding was said to make a male llama more tractable, and since large Levi didn’t have a place in our breeding plans, we thought about it. But he was such a fine fellow that we decided we might change our minds about breeding. He was to remain intact.

Our vet was Howdy Miller, a man with a natural warmth toward both humans and animals. I wanted a vet who was comfortable with emotion–if he was there when our old dog Martha died, I wanted to be able to cry without embarrassment. With Howdy, I knew I could.

Kelly held Levi while Howdy put the worming medicine, a paste, in Levi’s mouth. I kept the other llamas from crowding around. Levi struggled, and as I watched, I felt my physical uncertainty. What good was Phi Beta Kappa now? If Levi were really carrying on, I’d be scared of being hurt. I was embarrassed about it, but I had to admit I was intimidated.

Tumbleweed’s curiosity brought him closer. Since they were almost finished with Levi, I nabbed Tumble. Usually I could hold on, but this time he really didn’t want to be caught. He bolted. I kept my arms around his neck until he darted out the door, but I wasn’t dedicated enough to let myself be scraped against the side of the doorway.

So my physical skills had again been inadequate. But, paradoxically, I felt better. I knew that I could think of other ways to do things. We could build or buy a restraining chute. Sure, there might be an emergency sometime where I would be less skilled than I would want to be, but the number of times that would happen would probably be small. And I would learn from each one. I didn’t have to be Superwoman. I’d just be myself, and that would be good enough.

Whiskers came up near me, and I caught him. He didn’t resist. When Howdy called for Whiskers, I had him ready.

Howdy demonstrated giving shots, but I didn’t absorb much. Many llama breeders did their own worming and inoculating. Later for all that. I was learning step by step, and if the steps were small, so be it. They were steps.

Poco gave a questioning hum. He and the two large males stood up and surrounded Shadow and me. This time their body language said, “Oh, here you are again.”
When I took the halter off Shadow, he went running out to the part of the field where he could see Posey, but she didn’t happen to be in sight. Shadow gave another one of those sad, sad cries.

“Yea, sweetheart, it’s hard sometimes,” I said, and went back to the house with a heavy heart.

That Saturday it was sunny and I murmured to Kelly as we were waking up, “Honey, let’s take Shadow on an outing somewhere.”

As we walked past Posey, Shadow gave an inquiring little toot. He tried to go over to the fence, but accepted it when I didn’t let him. He quickly learned to load into our van. We drove to a school playground and strolled around the grassy field. Shadow watched girls playing basketball and dogs a block away. He took a bite of the grass.

“Oh, a jungle gym! Kelly, let me have him a moment,” I said.

“I doubt he’ll go into that,” Kelly said, looking at the large maze of pipes. Shadow followed me around it with no hesitation, but a plastic bag rustling in the wind caused him to kick up his heels.

On the way home, Shadow sat comfortably, as if he’d been going places for years. Kelly and I told him, and each other, how wonderful he was.

As spring came, I had less time for Shadow. We were taping for Llama Training with Bobra Goldsmith, and we did use him to demonstrate teaching a llama to load into a vehicle and sit down on command. The hikes season was approaching, and I was busy with preparations. Plus I was working part-time in town now, selling computers.

Then early in our third hikes season, we decided to quit at the end of the summer. We would sell Romeo. Kelly raised the question of Shadow.

“I don’t want to sell him,” I said, even though I was finding very little time to do things with him. “At least not unless the perfect situation just comes along.”

It did. A few weeks later, we ran into a family who had been to the ranch before. They had admired Shadow and now they asked us if he might be for sale.

I almost bit my tongue as I said, “He might.”

But my heart told me they would be good for him, and he for them. When they expressed interest in Romeo too, we agreed to sell both llamas to them.

The day they came over to get the llamas, I went down to the barn to say goodbye to Romeo and Shadow. Shadow hopped up as I came in. He stepped past Romeo, who remained seated, chewing his cud with a steady swish-swish. It did feel right to be saying goodbye to Romeo. We just didn’t need him, and he wasn’t getting enough attention. He was a really nice llama, and I was sorry I hadn’t had more time with him.

It was much harder to part with Shadow. I scratched his neck and gazed for the last time at his sweet face; he was so lovely to look at. By selling him, I was admitting that some dreams weren’t going to happen. This was a llama I was sure I wouldn’t sell. Maybe there was no such thing.

When the llamas’ new owners came, they were so delighted that I was gladdened by their joy. But as their truck and trailer disappeared down our driveway, there were tears in my eyes. Being a llama breeder sometimes meant learning to let go.

As far back as Shakespeare’s time, ruminating has had two meanings in English: chewing the cud and meditating or contemplating. Watching the llamas, it was easy to see how the second meaning grew out of the first.

Sometimes, sitting among my llamas, I too would ruminate. Somehow their minds seemed to be more connected to each others’ than I normally felt between people. Especially during pregnancies, I felt a sense of two minds emanating from the female llamas, their own and their growing offspring’s. They seemed to be keeping each other company.

At llama gatherings, I seemed to sense a kind of group mind connecting the animals. It was elusive, but I kept noticing it. At a Llama Association of North America conference in Oregon, there were fairground stalls filled with maybe a hundred llamas: long wooled and classical, mature and juvenile, male and female. There were also a few alpacas. There they all were, chewing cud, eating, pooping, and observing each other and us. I watched a male put his ears back, a gesture which seemed to be directed at another male several stalls away. That one put his feet up on his fence and stared intently at the first one.

As I walked among them, it seemed that they were having their own conference. Some llamas were almost always in a ruminative state of mind. I called them the Council of Elders. Other adult llamas seemed to touch into the group meditations, but their focus was more outward. The young ones played. Whenever I noticed this group mind, I would breathe more deeply, the muscles of my body would relax, and my eyes would become clearer. I felt the mixture of calm and curiosity that I so admired in llamas.

I would do my early-morning stretching exercises near the llamas and stroll among them last thing at night. At those times I could most easily feel the llamas’ conference. During the busy days, human mind chatter (my own and other people’s) made it more difficult for me to focus on what was happening with the llamas.

There was one large, handsome male llama whose owners had placed some photos on the wall. One showed him leaning out from his stall at some other event to greet a small child; in another, he was visiting a nursing home with the greatest of aplomb. “So you’re one of the bridge llamas,” I said to him. He looked up at the sound of my voice.

I used the phrase ‘bridge llama’ to mean a llama who was more interested than most in bridging the gap between llamas and humans. These were the best llamas to take out to meet the public, and they were often their owners’ favorite animals, no matter what they looked like. In my own herd, Poco and Lil Bit were the ones I thought of as bridge llamas.

As I sat and watched this male at the conference, I noticed that he seemed to be one of the more contemplative types. Perhaps the best bridges were the llamas who partook fully of the group mind and also connected with people. There were llamas who leaned more toward people and less toward their own kind. These could be endearing pets but they weren’t quite the ambassadors the more centered ones were.

As I ruminated, I thought of the ancient connections between llamas and the peoples who lived in the rugged South American altiplano long before the Incas. Their mythology said that llamas and humans both originated by coming up out of different parts of Lake Titicaca. There was poetic truth in that image.

While I was open to the concept that a soul’s journey might take it through many lifetimes of learning and growing, I also thought it possible that some kind of linkage between people of different times and places could exist without implying that we had lived the other lives. Being the daughter of a science fiction writer had accustomed me to the vividness of the human imagination.

“I had a past life with llamas,” a friend said to me on the phone one day.

“How do you know?”
“When I went to South America, things just seemed so familiar. I met an old Indian man who knew some Spanish, and we talked about llamas. The connection was incredible. It felt like I was remembering it more than anything.”

Nobody else I’d spoken with had been so convinced of a past-life connection, but several had speculated upon it. They weren’t necessarily the people who looked like they would be into new age ideas, either.

“Just suppose,” I said to my friend on the phone, “Just imagine that there was a group of people and llamas at some time back then, and they agreed to get together in another land and another time–now, in North America.”

He took up the idea. “I see them as a group who were together for the joy of it,” he said, going on to talk about the total chaos and confusion of the 1500s, when the Spanish came.

“I can’t even read about that time,” I said. “I start crying.”
After we hung up, I continued thinking about how the arrival of the Spanish led to the end of a world. And here we are now, faced with another possible world’s end. We surely live in perilous times ourselves. Could we learn anything from those Indians, and from those llamas? They had been decimated, but some had survived. Many of the old ways had remained.

I moved into a fantasy. As I sat dreamily, I found my imagination creating a North American woman, a llama breeder. She lives in the Sierras in California, rugged earthquake country somewhat like the Andes, and there she and her businessman husband raise their family and their llamas. She has a llama to whom she has given a name which turns out to be close to a mythical llama name, and the wool colors match up too. In a dream, this llama begs her to go to South America. He doesn’t tell her why before she wakes up.

She and her twelve year old son do go to South America. This boy has grown up with llamas and is very attuned to them. There’s an artifact in a museum that draws the boy to it. When he looks at it, he feels that he can almost remember something. It intrigues him. A guard at the museum notices his interest, and refers the gringos to a cousin in a llama-owning village high in the Andes.

Somehow there is danger, and there are ancient prophecies–which the villagers believe to be true–about a blond boy child finding a long-buried artifact. They give the boy some information but it isn’t enough for him to find this thing. Somehow it will contain important clues as to how the ancient culture survived the destruction of their world and how we too can survive.

It turns out that the missing essential information has been passed down for centuries through the llamas, from one generation to the next. The boy and his mother together learn, bit by bit, how to communicate telepathically with the llamas. They find the artifact and with the llamas’ help, decipher the message that in order to survive, people must learn to live as the llamas do, attuning far more to each other and their common good, experiencing the deep serenity that comes from knowing one’s connections with all of nature and the universe. They are taught some ancient rituals. At the end of the book, they return home, to begin the work of sharing the message on the artifact and learning to truly live it themselves.