Llama Drama Lesson and Pony Playday

 

Ok……so I’m still not quite back in the blogging vibe yet, but I do miss it sometimes. So, perhaps I can try to randomly post and read my favorite blogs every so often, instead of feeling like I must post every day and keep up on a daily basis with reading blogs, too. It seems overwhelming even when I think about doing that again, so I’ll try it this way, so as not to place any pressure on myself. And maybe, just maybe, I can still be considered a real blogger, even if I’m only part-time? *grin*

Ok, so where was I?

Oh yeah. A Llama Drama Lesson and a Pony Playday!

I invited my friend Kendra, over to my house again for a Pony Playday on Wednesday, but with a twist. This time she was going to bring her own pony, Bailey Boy, too. And not only to ride, but to somehow convince him that llamas were not horse eating monsters who were waiting to swallow him up and spit out his eyeballs!

And since I do in fact have two llamas of my own, it just made sense to have those lessons at my house.

(Does this lovely creature of mine look like she could eat a horse for lunch? I snapped this photo when I was sitting on the mounting block and she and I were watching Bailey and Kendra at the bottom of the hill)

(Kendra and Bailey just unloaded and on the way up to the barn. Notice the little sprigs of grass poking up???! Yay! Spring is finally here!)

They pulled up at 10am (why am I telling you this? Well, in this way we can keep track of how long it took Bailey to eventually overcome his fears of banana ears!), got unloaded and made their short trek up the hill to my barn. Ooops! They have to pass the llama paddock to reach the barn. Wasn’t gonna happen!

Bailey Boy gave Kendra quite a bit of trouble with snorting, dancing, prancing, spinning, pulling back and trying to bolt the second he saw my 2 llamas staring at their new visitor. And with the galloping and whinnying commotion on the other side of my pasture, from my neighbor’s 4 horses, who were just as excited to meet this new visitor and potential friend, Bailey was finding it very difficult to concentrate. It was just a little too much over-stimulation.

It didn’t matter that my sweet mare Apache was waiting, calmly and quietly up in her barn stall, Bailey was not going to go up there where, *gasp*, llamas were waiting, too.

(Apache wasn’t interested in Bailey’s Llama Drama in the least. She was more interested in hoovering up the last dregs of her breakfast hay and wondering when it was time for her to be saddled up for Pony Playday)

 

So Kendra walked him down to the fenceline that I share with my neighbor friend Fantastyk Voyager and allowed Bailey Boy to say Hello to the other horses.

And that is where Bailey decided it was safest to be, and no amount of persuading was going to convince him to take more than a few steps up to the barn.

So, I decided to bring my Apache mare down to him, hoping that Apache could help bridge the gap between Bailey and the llamas and barn. And she was able to persuade Bailey to walk up the hill about halfway, but that was it. So, I returned Apache to her stall and told Kendra, I had a new plan: Halter my friendliest llama and bring her down to Bailey.

What’s the worst that could happen, right? We predicted he would probably just lose his mind and go running helter skelter all over the pasture.

(There’s Fantastyk Voyager’s Yalla! on the right and Scout on the left. It was a cloudless, sunny day in the upper 70’s with some gusts of wind)

But good ‘ol Bailey Boy surprised us. Yeah, he did go running around, but only just a little bit, because he soon realized that my neighbor’s horses weren’t joining him and they weren’t worried about the llamas in the slightest. So, of course, he had to come back, because that’s where the safety was. And the llama. But at least he wouldn’t be facing the llama alone.

While Bailey kept his distance, snorting and blowing, my neighbor friends’ horses got a little bored and started looking on the ground for something to nibble, so Bailey decided to calm down and relax, too. And I started asking my female llama to walk in circles, so we would be doing a Approach and Retreat tactic, and then I handed the llama lead rope to Kendra so I could man the camera.

And this is what happened next:

But, as Clinton Anderson says “When you think you have only one horse, you really have two. Because what you teach on one side, you always have to teach on the other” And that proved right for Bailey, too. After he seemed desensitized to the llama on one side, and then he switched to the other side, he acted as if the llama was a brand new scary monster he had never seen before, and he even ran off! So, it was time to introduce the llama to his other side before he could be truly llama desensitized. (Note: Llamas may still give him a spook in other locations, but they should not be as big of a deal as before he was introduced up close to a llama)

Kendra was having fun, too. It was her first time to ever lead a llama or pet one. Cataleya was being a fine and well behaved llama ambassador and seemed to enjoy the job we had given her.

 

And then we switched back just to be sure that Bailey’s other side still remembered the llama.

And he did! He decided that he even liked the llama, to the dislike of Cataleya who felt Bailey try to groom her and take a nibble of her wool!

And you know, it always comes back to butt sniffing.

After we felt like Bailey was comfortable with Cataleya we wanted to move on to the next step: getting Bailey to walk willingly up to the barn so that we could eventually have our Pony Playday. Bailey was very willing and seemed happy to have Cataleya to walk with, too.

Until at the last minute, my male llama, Catlinite popped out from behind my horse trailer. Ooops!

Catlinite is larger and white and more intimidating than Cataleya. And he knows that, too. He is a well trained guard llama and used to enjoy charging other animals, including horses. He used to charge my neighbor friend’s horses when we first bought him 6 years ago, and they would run away. But one day, one of her horses (can’t remember if it was Nadia or Annie) decided to stand her ground and charge right back, and Catlinite never charged them again.

So Bailey spun around and headed back down to the bottom of the paddock where he felt safe. Kendra went back down and walked him back up. Once he realized that my mare Apache was up there at the barn, too, and he recognized his new friend Cataleya, too, he decided to stay with all of us. He even stuck his head over the llama/goat paddock to say Hello to my Catlinite, which really threw Catlinite for a loop. *grin*

He was feeling so confident, that Kendra and I felt he was finally llama desensitized!
(Note: This does not mean that he won't ever spook at the sight of other llamas. It just means that he is now aware of llamas and future confrontations should be less drama-filled.)
It only took about 2 hours from start to finish to get Bailey Boy desensitized to llamas.

Afterwards we decided it was time for Pony Playday time!

There aren’t many photos of this because we were just focused on having fun with our horses in my pastures and paddocks. We trotted over cavalettis, side-passed to the mailbox, ducked under the vine obstacle, rode through the tree tunnel, practiced turns on the forehand on the Big Black Hole trampoline tarp, desensitized Bailey Boy to spinning pin wheels, and practiced Figure-8s and Backing around natural obstacles like baby Pinon trees and yuccas. We rode our ponies for about 2 1/2 hours laughing and just having a great time.

(Kendra on her Bailey Boy)

I had a few moments of Apache testing me, when I would ask Apache to attempt a task, and she would back up in answer to my request. And then when I squeezed her to move forward, she would just back up more. I thought it was odd that even though my reins were loose, and I had never asked her with my hands to back up, she would continue backing up. I figured it out on my own that I wasn’t placing my legs back far enough and was instead asking her to keep backing up, so she did teach me something new that day, too.

(Wake up, Apache! Taken with Kendra’s cell phone, so not the best quality)

Also, a few times when I asked Apache to move forward, she would just stop, like when we got back up to the barn or when she would try to head over to, or back up to the mounting block, but I wasn’t planning on dismounting, and still wanted to continue riding around the pasture. So, without any more arguments from her, I told her to keep moving and she’d continue on.

At one point, one of my neighbor’s dogs snuck underneath our fence and ran into my pasture and tried to chase our horses. She was running around Bailey’s and Apache’s feet to upset our horses. Kendra and I just kept circling our horses, so they were always facing the dog and then I yelled at the dog “Go Home!” and then I made Apache chase the dog back under the fence into my neighbor’s arena!

It was kind of fun controlling that naughty dog like that with my horse. And it must have scored some brownie points (or is that carrot points?) with Apache, because afterwards, I noticed a distinct change in Apache with any request I asked her. She was much more willing and ready to comply.

(And here’s a very funny video that Kendra took with her cell phone, of Apache and I making a Figure 8 around the baby Pinon trees in our paddock. lol!)

I was also able to get my mare into a trot easier, too. We trotted around the pasture both with Kendra and Bailey, and on our own, too, and when we’d get up to the barn, it was a big deal to me, that Apache didn’t pause, but instead she kept on moving right past the barn and mounting block. Good girl!

But she wasn’t such a good girl after Kendra and I had finished un-tacking our ponies and were just hanging out chatting. I had Apache on her lead and she looked like she was asleep, when Bailey, also on his lead with Kendra, decided to get a little too close to Apache’s rear end, and Apache, quicker than lightning, double barreled him in the chest. Ouch!

Thankfully Bailey was none the worse for wear and wasn’t injured (As for me, my memory of those hooves on my face over a year ago, sure came back!), but Bailey kept his distance from Apache after that.

It was odd, though, because Apache did seem to like Bailey and when we were standing around talking while on horseback, both horses tried to sidle up to one another as they rested. And when they bellied up to the water tank to share a drink, they did so nose to nose with no issues. Of course, when they first met over the stall fence Apache was sure to squeal at him. Horses! You just never know what they will do!

Well, finally the day was coming to an end. It was 3pm and time for Kendra to take her Bailey Boy home. We had such a fun Llama Drama Lesson and Pony Playday and I can’t wait to do it again!

(And best of all, Bailey Boy was able to move past his Fears of Banana Ears!)