Scotland

Llama training is not a skill that everyone needs, but if you ever do, you will find it is a pleasure. Llamas are highly intelligent and they learn extremely quickly. Every llama ideally should be taught:

1. To be haltered.

2. To walk along with you when on a leash, keeping the leash loose.

3. To load into a vehicle.

4. To let you handle their body, so you can do grooming or check injuries.

Beyond the basics, people train llamas to do a variety of things. Perhaps most common is training to accept a pack so that the animal can carry a load. Llamas are sometimes trained to drive to cart. They can also be taught to “kush” which means to sit down; of course, if you train that, you also want to train the llama to get back up on command!

Bobra Goldsmith, a pioneering llama trainer, observes, “You can teach a llama to do something after several repetitions. It often surprises people how quickly llamas learn.”

After I heard Bobra say that once, I thought I would test out her assertion by counting how many repetitions it did take before my llama Whiskers would willingly enter my VW van through the side door. I didn’t have to count very far, just to five! Afterwards, he would always jump right in the van when we wanted to take him somewhere. Sometimes it was many months between outings, but he never forgot. In contrast, I have never succeeded in teaching any of my dogs something in only five trials.

Speaking of dogs, llamas learn much more quickly than dogs to walk easily when on a leash. Where a typical dog will be pulling this way and that at first, llamas are far more likely to keep the leash quite loose. So it’s great fun to hike with them. By the way, if you are out hiking with a llama and you see one or more horses coming along the trail towards you, do give way to them. Horses can be rather afraid of llamas when they first meet.

Bobra has had many llamas herself and out of her experience she has developed many ways to train them. For instance, she teaches llamas to allow themselves to be haltered by using a slow movement in approaching their faces with the halter. The animals seem to appreciate the calmness, and it’s really quite easy for anyone to learn to halter llamas this way. Her methods are also widely used with alpacas.

She works with young llamas, typically several months old, and she also works with adult llamas who may never have been trained or may have been trained minimally. While ideally every llama would be trained, the reality is that many owners don’t know how to do it or just don’t take the time. Bobra’s methods can be learned from a DVD, and you can get the DVD online. So if you have some llamas out in your pasture to train or if you are just wondering about what it would be like to have llamas, you can find out everything you need to know about training llamas.