If you have ever been around llamas, you will know that they learn very quickly and that their intelligence is remarkable. You can learn to train them, and it's important to teach llamas a few basic things that will make its life with people much easier: 1. To be haltered.
2. To walk on a loose leash.
3. To jump into a van, pickup, or trailer for transporting.
4. To let you handle their body, so you can do grooming or check injuries.
Beyond that, what a llama will be doing will determine what you train it to do. If a llama is destined to be a pack animal going into the mountains with you, then a series of lessons in carrying a pack will be called for. Llamas can be trained to drive to cart, to sit down and get up on command, and much more.
"Llamas are very fast learners," says Bobra Goldsmith, a well-known llama trainer. "When you are teaching a llama something, don't be surprised if he gets it after just a few trials."
After hearing her say that, I decided to see how many times I would have to load my llama Whiskers into the side door of our VW van before he would just jump in. It only took me five times. After that, he always knew exactly what to do, even if some months had gone by without an expedition that called for him to get into the van. Try teaching a dog something in just five repetitions! It will rarely work.
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.
While llamas are perhaps best trained while they are rather young (but not babies), Bobra has demonstrated that you can train a green adult llama as well. While in a perfect world every llama you acquire would be well trained, in fact many people just don't get around to much llama training. You can learn Bobra Goldsmith's training methods from a DVD which is available on the internet. People buy the DVD for this purpose, of course, but they also buy it when they are thinking about getting llamas and want to know what is involved. In any case, llama training can turn out to be a very enjoyable activity.
