Hey All, I have a one year old gelded boy (Musket) and he is proving to be a problem to halter train. My other one year old gelded boy (Pablo) was a breeze, catching, haltering and walking on the lead is no problem at all now. Musket won't let me get past putting the catch rope around his neck, each time I step in to fasten it, he runs to his escape route. Today I managed to halter and put a lead on him, albeit very difficultly. Naturally he wasn't happy with it, and jumped around on the end of the lead. I wasn't overly concerned with this, because Pablo did the same thing in the early days, and he is fine now. When I took Musket out of the catch pen on the lead (so we would have more room), he jumped around as I expected. But what happened next I didn't expect. It appears that my 17 year old gelded boy (Shaggy - I've had him since he was 6 months old), thought that Musket was trying to hurt me with all his jumping, so he ran over and protected me, by placing himself between me and Musket, and then started attacking Musket! I couldn't let go of Musket's lead, so I found myself with a panicked, jumping alpaca on a lead in one hand, and my other arm holding Shaggy around the neck, to stop him trying to hurt Musket. Shaggy is a big strong boy too, so fun is not a word I would use to describe the situation! Needless to say I got covered in spit (lol). I managed to get the halter off Musket so he could get away, but Shaggy chased him and kept having a go at him. I ran over and put myself between the two, talking calmly to Shaggy until he settled down. Eventually it all calmed down, and now everything is back to normal (although I'm not sure Musket will ever talk to me again!). I guess the first thing I need to do is not let Shaggy get to us while we are lead training, so I'll just do all the training in the catch pen until he is used to the lead. That's the easy part. But now Musket fears the training session, and won't stand still. I really want to be able to take Musket and Pablo for walks, but it is not going very well with Musket at all, and every time I try, I appear to be going backwards rather than forwards. How can I fix this situation please? Thanks, Steve Q.
