littlesoubrette

I am a llama. AMA.

I know right! I was looking at AMAs last night and decided to try my luck with my one weird little hobby.

So I've never shown horses, but I imagine it's similar. So when you show llamas, you usually participate in 4-5 different classes. Each class has different content.

Showmanship is how well you and your llama work together to show off his/her good qualities. This would be if your llama was in a show based on his/her breeding characteristics, etc. But for me, my llama was not breeding stock so we just did it for the skills involved. Basically you dress up all fancy (as in the photo I posted from Nationals) and parade your llama around looking snazzy. It's pretty boring IMO.

Pack/PR/Obstacle are all similar, but are divided into three different classes. These are really intense obstacle courses, similar to dog agility courses. Pack class tests your llama's ability to maneuver through obstacles that you'd find if you were backpacking. They have to wear a pack with about 40lbs in it for this class. Usually there's water obstacles, logs to jump over, etc. PR is basically a class all about stuff you'd find out in the public. Balloons, strollers, jumping in and out of cars, and other things if you were to go and do a parade or walk with your llama (which I did every year). And obstacle class is everything left out of the previous two classes. Anything involving teeter-totters, tires, hula hoops, etc.

The final class that is only occasionally done at local shows and never at nationals is costume class. This is pretty much where you and your llama dress up and the most intense, creative, and challenging costume would win. I mopped the floor with my competition 99% of the time when I did costume class. Here's a photo of us as a knight in shining armor and his princess: http://i.imgur.com/421eh.jpg

Laser llamas! My llama's name is Lucero de Noche. I didn't name him, but it means bright star of night, or something like that. His mother's name meant star and his father's name meant knight. I called him Noche for short though. And of course, all the silly nicknames that followed: Nochoco, Lucello, Noch, Llama, etc. Haha.

I leased my llama. I paid a monthly fee and did some chores around the ranch and they let me train him and show him all I wanted. I felt like it was a really fair trade off because I lived in town and couldn't have a llama.