Alpaca Shepherdess
How it all began
In the summer of 2024 I began taking care of the alpacas at Hideaway Wood Farm.
It opened up a connection with these beautiful animals beyond just their daily care. I became aware of the similarities between these timid, curious and intuitive prey creatures and humans who had experiences challenges.
I trained in CameliDynamics and saw how treating these creatures with the respect they deserve opens something in the human heart.
How profound it feels to gain the trust of a nervous animal. How right it feels to handle them in a gentle, respectful and consent based way.
Spending time with the alpacas offered a gentle healing which I didn't go looking for. And in advocating for their needs, I began understanding how to advocate for my own.
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My experience
I spent two years as Herd & Operations Manager at the farm responsible for husbandry, herd health, staff management, staff training, farm management, animal handling, alpaca training and daily care of the alpacas.
During my time at the farm I transitioned us to more natural alpaca care methods, trained in and transitioned to the gentle and respectful CameliDynamics handling approach and was responsible for organising and running all alpaca related events, experiences and programmes.
We carved ourselves out as specialists in natural alpaca care, CameliDynamics and working with alpacas for their therapeutically supportive effects for our wellbeing.
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What I offer
I also absolutely adore supporting other Camelid owners to find more ease, calm and fulfilment with their animals using CameliDynamics handling. If this is you, pop me an email and we can arrange a call about your requirements to see if I can help.
I am also now seeking land to grow and maintain a small fibre herd. And some day hope to return to offering my Camelid Calm programme.
As a trained yoga and meditation teacher of ten years, certified Animal Assisted Activity and Animal Assisted Interventions specialist, I offer experiences for people to come and enjoy being amongst the alpacas for wellbeing and learning to handle them using CameliDynamics handling and training techniques as a therapeutic intervention (not therapy just harnessing the naturally therapeutic benefits of being with these unique creatures).
Becoming an Alpaca Shepherdess
The move to alpaca shepherdessing was both a surprise and a homecoming.
You know when you look back over your life and a seemingly out of place passion suddenly makes glaring sense? This is how I felt as I found my way to herding alpacas.
I have always felt a deep affinity with animals and completely at ease in their presence but more than that, I had quite a specific obsession with animal behaviour and herding.
To the amusement and bemusement of my husband I was completely obsessed with watching sheepdog trials as a kid and living on a sheep farm with the field directly outside of our living room and bedroom windows, I get to watch herding 'live' often.
I often felt that I was like a shepherd(ess) without a flock, a herdswoman without a herd. And then... I, quite unexpectedly, found my flock, happened upon my herd and an unexpressed part of myself found a home.
I found home, healing and meaning amongst the alpacas.
CameliDynamics
What is it all about?
There's an amazing woman called Marty McGee Bennett who has worked with South American camelids (llamas and alpacas in terms of domesticated species, originating from vicuñas and guanacos in terms of their wilder cousins) for over thirty years.
In her words it is, 'a collection of methods that represent the most positive least intrusive techniques for training and managing camelids'.
It's truly beautiful work. It's all about understanding their behaviour and why they react in certain ways. The approach requires that we pay a lot of attention to our own body language, movements and behaviours too. It requires complete presence.
The idea is that we move from the traditional method of cornering, grabbing and restraining to allowing the animal their escape route, slowly desensitising them to our proximity and helping them to remain in balance whilst we work with them.
Alpacas and llamas are generally much more fearful of being grabbed and restrained than they are of the husbandry work we need to do.
When we stop doing those things they can learn to stand calmly in balance whilst we work instead of trying to buck us off and escape.
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Toenails no longer required a team
We began by trialling it out on some of our most troublesome girls in the autumn of 2024. They were under handled, nervous and skittish making husbandry tasks harder to accomplish.
I was taught that it took three people to pin an alpaca down to do a simple husbandry task like toenails, vitamin paste or vaccinations.
Within a few handling sessions their responsiveness to the technique and the increase in their trust showed us how effective and most importantly, respectful of their unique nature CameliDynamics is and so we rolled it out across the herd.
Within a couple of months of not grabbing them, I was single handedly conducting herd health checks and vaccinations and toenails no longer required a team.
At first we wondered if it might slow us down and make things harder but in fact it made us much more efficient and I felt good about the fact that we were treating our animals with the respect, autonomy and kindness they deserve.
It became a significantly calmer experience for the animals and for us too. I began to look forward to health check day rather than dread it.
Pouncing like leopards
We are taught to sneak and pounce like leopards which understandably makes our animals edgy.
Alpacas are incredibly sensitive and intuitive, I saw over the years that knew my intentions. So I harnessed that. I gave them visual cues of what I was coming to do, I used the same language to train them to my words. These simple changes changed the nature of my work.
I didn't hide anything from them and they were calmer for it. They knew what was coming and what to expect.
And the most important tool in the box? My regulation. If I headed into the handling pen time pressured, stressed, frustrated or low in tolerance they knew. And it was absolutely pointless trying to do anything. So I often walked away or tried to shift my state.
I realised over time that the crossovers between yoga, meditation and CameliDynamics are huge; presence, breath, body awareness and awareness of environment are all essential to being able to use this technique effectively. If we're aware of our bodies and responses the animals are more likely to settle in our presence.
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My Training
In February 2025 I took a CameliDynamics Handling and Animal Assisted Activity (AAA) course with senior CameliDynamics consultant Victoria Barrett of Simply Alpaca.
