A case of llama love
The Peloquins call it "llama love."
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Whatever you call it, raising the intelligent, woolly, South American pack animals is becoming quite rewarding for the Evans couple, who won a first-place performance ribbon at this year's Georgia National Fair in Perry.
Dorthe Peloquin shows how the judges examine a llama's teeth during competition. One of her llamas recently won a first-place ribbon against 23 other llamas at the Georgia National Fair.
Photo by Jim Blaylock
Wonderboy, the Peloquin's 2-year-old male Apaloosa, a light-wool llama, beat out 23 other llamas in the public relations performance class. Wonderboy finished second out of 52 llamas in that classification last year.
"I always go in hoping to win," said Dorthe Peloquin, a semi-retired physician. "I didn't expect to win first (place). When you see there's 24 or 52 entrants, you don't ever expect to win first (place)."
There are two performance classifications at llama shows: public relations and obstacle courses, Peloquin said.
Public relations courses test a llama's temperament, to see how the animal would behave in a petting zoo or other public exhibition. The llama must willingly overcome obstacles such as walking through tires, navigating see-saws and bridges and crossing water hazards while coping with distracting stimuli added to their environment, she said.
The stimuli can be something as simple as bells brushing the llama's head throughout the course, or in the case of one show, a man in a gorilla suit jumping out from behind a trailer, Peloquin said.
Dorthe Peloquin walks her llama, Wonderboy, to a pond on her Columbia County property. Dorthe and her husband Wayne travel to llama shows around the country and recently won a first-place ribbon at Georgia National Fair. Dorothe says Wonderboy is "Mr. Cool."
Photo by Jim Blaylock
"I didn't like that one because I didn't want my llama to know that there's going to be a gorilla around the side of each trailer," she said.
"Wonderboy, he's Mr. Cool," she said. "He has just the right temperament for a performance show animal."
Wonderboy also won fourth place for light-wooled 2-year-olds and Wondergirl, the other llama the Peloquins entered, took fourth place for light-wooled female yearlings, Peloquin said.
The Peloquins enter only two to three shows per year, but their other llamas have also performed well at shows, she said.
Their llamas' wins are impressive considering that two years ago, Peloquin said, she really didn't know anything about llamas.
In September 2003, after a visit to the North Carolina Mountain State Fair, the Evans couple said they fell in love with the South American camelids after experiencing their first llama show. Wayne Peloquin, a retired former CEO of Doctors Hospital, wanted to purchase one on the spot, but Dorthe Peloquin said she thought they should wait and research the needs and demands of raising the animals before they bought one.
Dorthe gets an affectionate nuzzle from Gypsy, one of the first llamas she and her husband Wayne brought to Columbia County.
Photo by Jim Blaylock
Later that fall, the couple bought two female llamas, Gypsy and Candy, and a miniature horse named Thunder from a breeder in Mississippi, Dorthe Peloquin said.
Now, the couple's menagerie includes five llamas (three are pregnant), two miniature horses and a miniature donkey, two pygmy goats, chickens, plus their three conventional pets - dogs.
Prices for a registered, show-quality llama start at $1,000 minimum for males and $1,500 for females, with futurity llamas topping $50,000, Dorthe Peloquin said. Unregistered animals sell for less but tend not to be trained and cannot be shown. They tend not to be used to humans.
"It can take years, or you can train them in a few simple things in a couple of months," she said.