Alpaca Shepherdess
In the summer of 2024 I began taking care of the alpacas at Hideaway Wood Farm, in the winter I became the owner of my very own, a gorgeous and graceful breeding female called Ruffian (she is agisted with her herd including her three offspring).
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.
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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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 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
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 and part of the approach requires us to 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.
Marty explains that 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, the theory is they learn to stand calmly in balance whilst we work instead of trying to buck us off and escape.
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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.
Within a few 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.
We thought it might slow us down and make things harder but in fact it has made us more efficient all whilst treating our animals with the respect and kindness they deserve. It's a much calmer experience for the animals and for us too.
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.
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In February 2025 I took a CameliDynamics Handling and Animal Assisted Activity (AAA) course with senior CameliDynamics consultant Victoria Barrett of Simply Alpaca.
