Heads and Halters - Alpacas and Llamas

Page 4

Halter Balance

A halter should be balanced. What does that mean? Fasten the crown piece and hold the halter out in front of you with one hand on the noseband and the other on the crown piece. As you move the halter in varying ways, do all the parts flow easily together with each movement? Do all the parts remain in proportion to one another? Is there enough flexibility throughout or do certain parts of the halter remain stiffly in position causing another part to crimp or buckle? This is an important "test" as every alpaca and llama face is a bit different. Each part of a halter should remain balanced within the whole while still maintaining the ability to adjust to the variations in head shape and size.

Halter Comfort Affects Behavior

We have considered safety. How does a properly fit halter - a safe halter - affect comfort and behavior? It would seem reasonable that an ill-fitting halter would be uncomfortable as well as distracting. Consider the distraction within ourselves should our pants be too tight or heaven forbid, our underwear should consistently "ride up"! It is not only uncomfortable but it is distracting and interrupts our focus. The above "human" distractions are certainly not life threatening but what if we felt they could threaten our life? What if those things were actually affecting our ability to breathe easily? What if we just feared that they could? How might that affect our behavior, our comfort, and our concentration and focus... our overall and immediate emotional stability?

In my many years of working with difficult alpacas and llamas, I have witnessed some rather amazing attitudes expressed behaviorally by both with regard to their halters. One of the most profound was a llama who was impossible to handle while haltered. She flipped between violent movements and a frozen stance. Her eyes were held extremely wide open darting here and there in what could only be described as panicked fear. She wore a red, fixed noseband halter, which sat well beyond the bone on the softer cartilage of her nose. Like the ring on the cone, it was up as far as it could go and was held firmly there by the crown piece. It was causing her great distress. Upon removing her halter, I unconsciously began to fit her with an adjustable noseband but -- still a red colored -- halter. She would have no part of it bucking wildly in her attempts to stay as far from that "thing" as she could. Hmmm... I wondered about the color. The red one she had worn before had clearly caused her distress. We put away the red halter and tried once again with a black one. Piece of cake! She did not particularly mind wearing a halter just as long as it fit properly and. was not red!

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