CameliDynamics

The gentle, respectful and consent based approach I use with my animals

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.

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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
 

I began by trialling it out on some of the most troublesome girls I was in charge of in the autumn of 2024. They were under handled, nervous and skittish making husbandry tasks harder to accomplish.

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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.

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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.

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Within a couple of months of not grabbing them, I was single handedly conducting herd health checks and inoculations and toenails no longer required a team.

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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.​

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It became a significantly calmer experience for the animals and for us too.​

I began to genuinely look forward to health check day rather than dread it.

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My Training

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In February 2025 I took a CameliDynamics Handling and Animal Assisted Activity (AAA) course with my friend and mentor, senior CameliDynamics consultant Victoria Barrett of Simply Alpaca.