WALKING WITH UDOKAN

I have mentioned the big llama Udo a numer of times.  Out in the paddock frollicking with the boys he thinks he is King Pin with lots of huffing and snorting as he stands on the highest point of the dam wall - head and tail raised high.  Occasionally he will chase one of the alpacas around just to let them know he is the boss.  It was quite funny one day when he picked on the smallest, but cheekiest alpaca, Picasso, who just turned around and spat Udo in the eye.

Last weekend we took Holman, the little black suri, out for a walk with Udo. (Holman is a most wonderful walker - keeps exactly to your pace and doesn't pull on the lead.)  Holman was at the front and when I stopped with him, Udo kept coming with Bill.  Udo made a grave mistake and tried to sniff Holman's rear end.  A very accurate foreceful kick ensued and when I looked back I saw a llama truly in pain.  Holman had struck a hard blow right on the left side of Udo's mouth and here was this huge animal standing with his eyes closed and his jaw visibly shaking.  Camelids have pretty useless tongues, but Udo was trying so hard to move his mouth around to alleviate the pain.  If he was a child, you'd try to rub it, but with this large boy it was best to just stop for a while and let him get over it.  I certainly wasn't going to try to get near that mouth.

Then as we walked along I realised that all this happened with only one sound - the thud of Holman's foot against Udo's head.  As obvious as his pain was, there was not a cry or even a moan.

This morning I decided to take Udo out for a walk on his own.  This requires incredible patience as he doesn't make it easy to put his halter on.  If you walk towards him with the halter, he just positions his rear end towards you. Then he just watches (without turning his head) and as you move one way, he manouvers in the opposite direction, never letting you get near his head.  In llama language, the rear end means "I can kick you, so beware" and I keep a respectful distance. Now if you have two people in the enclosure, and position one person on each side, Udo gives in quite quickly.  But when he knows you are alone, this slow dance can go on for a long time.  After at least 10 minutes of this little game, I became very determined to "win".  So I got Udo into a smaller area and stood at the gap in the fence.  He proceeded to show me his rear for another 10 minutes and then finally turned around to see how he would get out.  I opened the gap a little more and he came towards me.  As soon as I lifted my arm, he just turned around and showed me his rear again. 

Eventually he really wanted to get out so he came over to me. He does understand the word "pat" to mean that I want to pat down the front of his neck.  I just kept standing there with my hand halfway out saying "pat".  Finally he thrust out his neck so that I could pat it and he knew that I would then grab the lower part of his neck (which is armpit height on me).  Once I have his neck, even though he could easily pull away with his massive strength, he then lets me hold on.  I then raised the halter with my left hand as I held on his neck with my right arm and he raised his nose so high, I couldn't reach to put the halter on.  A cartoon clealy comes to mind of this sturdy boy taking off with a whisp of a human - arms anchored on his neck and body floating at chest height!

Persistence brings rewards.  As soon as I got the halter over his nose (good stretching exercise for me), he just stood there and let me do up the buckle and then happily followed me out of the gate for a 15 minute walk around the triangle paddock.  During this walk, we can stop and he lets me cuddle him.  He obviously enjoys it, especially a light stroking along the bottom of his jaw.  He made no effort to get away or play the "rear end" game.  He didn't refuse to walk any any stage and followed everything I wanted him to do.

When we came back to the enclosure, he just stood there and let me take the halter off and put it back on repeatedly, quite enjoying the attention.  I gave him one final "pat" without the halter and off he went with the other boys racing to the bottom gate for me to let them into the dam paddock.

That's how you spend an hour to do a 15 minute walk on a wonderful fine winter's day.