Is it really consent if they don't have a choice?
What the alpacas have taught me about consent
In February 2025 I attended a training on CameliDynamics (and Animal Assisted Activity and Interventions) with Victoria Barrett of Simply Alpacas. I came home changed from the inside out.
An unexpected consequence of learning to handle the alpacas in a gentle and respectful way, was that it was teaching me how I can ask for the type of handling I need as a survivor of abuse and how we, as humans, can learn to accept each other as we are.
If you know nothing of Camelids and have arrived here, please don’t let the specifics put you off. Beyond the particular ways we work with alpacas and llamas this work can be universally applied to human relationships, particularly to parenting and in relationship and to other animals. Bear with me as I nerd out a little in what follows, it’s going somewhere I promise.
I started working with alpacas in July 2024 and became aware of CameliDynamics in the Autumn of that same year. Once I saw this gentle and respectful way of handling the alpacas, I couldn’t unsee it and I started working out how I could learn to handle ours this way. Without much money to my name, I decided to try to teach myself. It started by reading Marty McGee Bennett’s book the Camelid Companion, buying the equipment and giving it a go and after my first beautiful and profound experience with one of our girls, Annie, I was hooked. Standing beside her unrestrained, accepting gentle touch and both of us breathing calmly I knew I wanted to go deeper. I knew I wanted to be able to handle our whole herd in this way.
I threw caution (and perhaps sense) to the wind and booked onto the soonest course available to me with no idea how I’d afford it. (Huge love and respect to Victoria for allowing me to pay in instalments). And after three days of hands on experience I returned home and began trialing some of the techniques on our herd.
The single biggest takeaway from my time with Victoria was consent. During the course when discussing halter training she asked, ‘is it really consent if we aren’t giving the animal a choice?’ I was really struck by this question.
Standard alpaca halter training is to corner the animal, grab them round the neck and hold them tightly whilst pulling the halter into the nose regardless of response. High priority is given to not ‘losing the fight’.
Using a CameliDynamics approach the work begins before we’ve even got our hands on the animal. To halter train using a CameliDynamics approach we first regulate ourselves. If I’m anything less than calm and centred the animals notice and are much less likely to be responsive to my requests. What follows is a fairly in depth description of haltering with consent. Again, please bear with me, it’s going somewhere…
We then create a catch pen and quietly and calmly herd the animals into the pen (I personally respect an alpaca’s choice not to enter the pen if they are resistant to the herding on that day). After a few months of handling in this way, most of our alpacas now walk into the pen without any herding required. The ultimate in terms of consent.
The next step is to ‘catch’ the animal and we do this using a special catch rope and wand. This allows me to maintain a safe distance from the alpaca whilst making a connection. I can then discard the wand and gradually approach the alpaca, being conscious of staying ‘behind the eye’, outside of arms reach and giving them constant access to their ‘escape route’. As prey animals alpacas value their capacity to escape very highly. Standing behind the eye and moving my body out of the way to allow them to walk is one of the most safety inducing things I can do.
Eventually if I continue to position myself correctly and allow the alpaca to walk they will stand at which point I can move forwards slightly and see how they feel about me getting closer. For some animals this will lead to me being able to make contact with their neck with the back of my hand in a firm circle before stepping away again. For others they will move away and the session will end with me simply standing in their presence and breathing calmly, helping them to feel safe in my company without any other expectations.
I don’t move to the next step until they are calmly accepting of the preceding one and (this bit was big for me in terms of my own relationship with consent) this is something I do each and every time. I don’t assume a level of consent because this particular alpaca allowed me close last time. Each session I am asking the question again afresh. ‘Can I get closer to you today?’ ‘Do you feel safe today'?’ ‘How are you feeling about being haltered today?’.
If the animal is standing and calmly accepting touch (rather than frozen in fear - I have to be attuned to their very unique and subtle body language at all times to discern between the two) then I can attach the catch rope at which point I usually step back and offer the reward of space. Space and an escape route are the ultimate rewards for a prey animal.
If this is the first time I’m haltering an animal, I would re-approach and offer some TTouch. TTouch is a series of touch that can be used to calm and induce relaxation with all animals and even humans, created by Linda Tellington-Jones. Alpacas are naturally very head shy, again as a prey species completely dependent on grazing and moving to survive they are very protective of their heads and legs. The halter can feel like a threat to their survival if they have not experienced safe touch on their faces, nose bone and jaw.
We then move on to showing the alpaca the halter. It can be tempting to hide things we know the alpacas may dislike, such as needles for injections, vitamin drenches etc. but as Victoria quite rightly taught us, hiding something is a form of lying. So I show them the halter and I hold it in such a way that they can see through it. I can then touch their nose bone the long crown piece attachment so that they get used to that as a feeling before once again showing them the halter. At this point I am not holding their neck, I still have my hand lightly on the catch rope to offer rebalancing signals and keep them in balance (standing squarely on their four legs) but I am not pulling them into the halter.
This next part requires a huge amount of regulation and patience on my part. I find that if I am calm but confident it goes well. If I am inpatient or in a rush it tends to end badly. I wait for the animal to be standing calmly in balance and receptive to the halter and then I draw the halter onto their nose with my left hand only before putting my hand under their chin to flip the halter strap into my right hand (so that I’m not reaching around their necks over the back - which feels like grabbing and can make them panic) and fasten it high up by the ears nice and tightly so that the nose piece is nice and high up on their nose bone. It might take many minutes for me to be able to pop the halter onto their nose. They might keep turning away or dip down and I just have to breathe and wait and offer rebalancing signals (gentle signals on the catch rope that invite them to stand back squarely on their four legs with their head in balance).
I had done a little haltering on our young boys before the course and many were very, very fearful of it and I couldn’t get anywhere near putting it on. After learning this method and offering a consensual approach most of our boys now stand and calmly accept the halter.
Out of our five 18 month old boys all now accept the halter calmly and enjoy heading out on walks, one still doesn’t want to wear the halter on some days and I don’t make him and one is still a little nervous on walks so we only offer short practice walks with him if he wants to come and we don’t take him out with customers (yet!). They’ll be ready when they’re ready and not before.
It’s been hard to see that beforehand I was not giving them a choice and I also thought that they all had to be ready by a certain point in time. Now that I let them make a choice about whether to come into the pen to be haltered up for a walk and another choice about whether they want to wear the halter, I have a far greater number of the group heading out on walks than I thought I would at this point. If I had continued the previous approach without offering a choice I know I wouldn’t have got here this soon and those three nervous ones would still be choosing not to come. Of course they would have. Who wants to be grabbed, forced into submission and made to do something they don’t want to do. I didn’t realise that’s what I was doing but I was. One of the biggest lessons for me has been expectations. If I am to be successful in my handling and training, I must remove the expectation and accept the alpaca I find in front of me on any given day.
Looking after alpacas is a massive lesson in accepting others as they are and not expecting them to be as we wish they were. Alpacas are a timid, shy, prey species. They don’t want to be touched or stroked or even approached most of the time. And what a beautiful thing that is. How liberating it is to be accepted for who we are and not to be made to feel lesser for not showing up in the ways other want or expect us to. What a gift to be able to offer that to our alpacas (and our people for that matter!).
The interesting thing about this approach is that I make far more contact and have far more up-close, incredibly special moments with our alpacas than I ever did when I was constantly trying to reach out to them and wasn’t handling them in a consensual way.
This is in part because they trust me now and what an absolute privilege that is.
I don’t get kicked unless I make an error of judgement, I don’t get spat on unless I am in the firing line of an alpaca spit fight by mistake and they don’t run away from me more often than not.
Unless I have my catching equipment with me and am setting up a catch pen, I don’t try to touch the alpacas. This allows them to understand the rules of engagement: ‘If she doesn’t have equipment and we’re not in the pen we’re safe’.
When I walk through the paddocks or shelters, I keep my hands to myself at all times. Even if they get really, really close. Nose close. I just offer a nose to nose greeting and carry on. If I have to move between them I move them with my hips, not my hands. This single shift in my behaviour has created the biggest shift in theirs.
We all deserve to be given the space we need and to be accepted for who we are and how we are on any given day.
I feel there is a huge amount to be learned from CameliDynamics in terms of offering a trauma informed approach to human relating, particularly when it comes to women.
Humans are a predator but we are also prey and most, in fact I’d go as far as to say, all women have had their boundaries crossed at some point, heightening our prey responses. This can make our relationship to approach and touch complicated. Some of us can shut down even in the context of a safe relationship. The principles of consensual, gentle and respectful handling of alpacas have been incredibly supportive to me in feeling safe with approach and contact. We all deserve to be accepted as we are, we all have the right to request respectful handling and we should all be being given choices in everything we do.
Working with alpacas (and humans) gently, respectfully and with consent:
If you’re not in the pen - hands to yourself
Respect my decision not to enter the pen
In the pen - ask before you approach, ask again before you make contact, pay attention to body language, back away if it’s a no and work on building trust again
Don’t hide things that might be difficult or painful - show me what I’ve got coming so that I can prepare
Let me make a choice about what I do and don’t participate in
Just because I’m anxious doesn’t mean I don’t want to be involved - find ways to build trust with the most nervous of us so that we can be a part of things
There are no assumed levels of consent - every single session is a question
Carly x
