Wednesday, March 22, 2006

Camelid conference



Hello,
This week I am attending the International Camelid conference being held at Ohio State. Yesterday I got to attend some of the labs and I wanted to share with you an incredible lecture I heard on Camelid Handling. Marty McGee, is a animal behavorlist who has spent her career understanding and teaching others about camelid behavior. Most of us (myself included) are under the misconception that a llama or alpaca's neck is a big handle that can be grasped easily when they are backed against a wall and held in place using your muscles. But I was blown away by how this instructor used her body language, the llama's body language, and very simple, discreet body motions to calmly handle these animals.
Her website is:
http://www.camelidynamics.com
If you ever had an interest in any sort of animal behavior, I highly suggest her book or one of her weekend clinics. You will be amazed on what a difference you can have on an animal's behavior by understanding how their minds work and gearing your handling around that. In case you didn't guess already, this lab got me really excited about llama/alpaca handling and behavior.

Anyway, today I spent all day listening to lectures and the majority of them were really interesting. I won't go too much into that ....Medicine stuff. But there is 3 more days of the conference, so I will be up-to-date on all the llama/alpaca information. :-D

Over and out

No comments: