AAT

Our friend, Elaine, has been staying with us for the last 3 weeks. She has been under a lot of pressure at work and home and her family thought it would be helpful if she could get away from it all for a while, so she took us up on our open invitation to come down to the farm.

At first she just chilled out for a while but soon started to take part in all the farm activities. She has been looking after the weanlings and set herself some goals to make it more interesting. This included getting the chickens and baby alpacas to feed from her hand (achieved), she also made a start on learning all the alpacas' names, which was a more demanding task.

She really enjoyed cleaning the paddocks and getting involved with the running of the place and it helped her to relax. It also helped her to get rid of her excess energy and because you always have to be calm and confident around livestock she felt that we should call the experience AAT - Alpacas as Therapy. I don't suppose that we will be taking alpacas into hospitals like PAT dogs, but watch this space.

Sadly for us Elaine is moving on tomorrow, but has promised to keep in touch and come down for some agility training from time to time, and just to socialise. Buttercup, has really enjoyed it as well. Buttercup is a fluffy rabbit which is going form the basis of a children's storyline which Elaine is planning. See today's photo.