BALL GAMES
..or "the statue game"

THE METHOD I'M USING

Ball games are really just a variation of retrieving.I have two types of ball games at present, one where the llamas uses his nose to propel the ball, and the other with his feet. To avoid confusion, I train the boys to do one or the other, not both!

I throw or kick the ball a few yards and it is brought back to me, not in the mouth as is a thrown glove or toy, but on the grass being propelled by the llama's nose or kicked by his foot. The goal-posts are my feet. I begin the whole exercise with making the ball an active target and progress to rewarding any sort of nudging of the ball on the ground. 




 

Then I progress to rewarding any nudging/footing that leads to a movement of the ball and gradually progress to bringing the ball back to my feet just a few inches away. The whole process is broken down into bitesize pieces. The biggest problem for the llama is changing direction; he literally has to position his whole body to propel the ball in the required direction.

If you can add anything to my work or have any questions or comments, please e-mail me.

HOW WE'RE DOING

The story so far:Whilst most of this fun stuff is done with Oscar and Toby, Dillon is actually the Beckham of the herd! He loves the ball. He returns it to me from quite a distance using his nose and is quite good at positioning his body to get direction. Oscar has been trained to use his feet rather than his nose. Toby is starting on noseball! Banksy the alpaca is being trained to toss a large, soft ball with his mouth.

July 10th 2011

RECENT NOTES ON PROGRESS

I did some work woth young Banksky today, tossing his ball. I hadnt done it for some weeks but, as always with camelids, he hadn't forgotten a thing! I am aiming for height in this exercise, so am only rewarding the high passes back to me. This is one of the "mouth" exercises where so often the eating of the reward interferes with the next chuck of the ball. The tempo slows as a result and I, for one, getfrustrated!

Banksy is getting quite adept at side passes to me. Sometimes I deliberately stand at an angle to him. He knows that only the delivery back to me results in a reward, so he has quite an incentive to pass accurately.I take pity on him occasionally when he has tossed inaccurately a few times and reward an approximate one, rather than lose his interest.

 

 

 

....Bending it like Beckham!