#(this post is dedicated to the anon who said poldine was their favourite along with pandolf because they're both sweethearts!

[hedgehog-moss]

Today was Baby Poldine’s first day of school ! The idea for now is just to get her used to being in a narrow enclosed area without getting stressed, and pet her everywhere while she’s in there to desensitise her (especially her head & legs), so she can start wearing a halter next month.

People who were here in 2019 might remember that this simple gentle curriculum didn’t work very well with Baby Pampe. No amount of nothing happening while stuck in a small enclosed area ever made Pampe accept the concept of small enclosed area. It just made her more determined to escape. One of my posts about this ended with:

This didn’t make me worry too much about Poldine’s education, because by now I’ve accepted that you can’t use Pampérigouste as an indication of how llamas in general behave. Getting Poldine to enter the chute was incredibly easy in comparison to her mum! She saw that her hay net was here and trustingly went up to it—while Pampe was standing outside the corral like

Shhhh.

Poldine was quite stressed in the beginning, her little legs were shaking and she folded herself up like a caterpillar trying to find an exit—

—but at no point did it occur to her to jump over any fences, because that’s wrong. Once she stopped squirming I gave her a treat and then petted her for a bit. She was very tense, poor thing, and making anxious little hums.

It’s raining and you’re soggy and smell like wet goat. This isn’t fun for either of us.

She was clearly wondering what horrible thing was about to happen to her, and then I opened the chute and let her back up and out of it and she was looking around like “That’s it...?” She even got distracted from her initial project to get the hell away from here, when she realised her breakfast was still there. (Baby Pampe never would have let food distract her from freedom.)

To congratulate her for remaining in the corral a couple more minutes than she strictly had to, she got an extra clementine peel that was meant for Pirlouit.

Still, she ran to her mum as soon as she was out of the corral and tried to nurse for comfort. The chute was a little bit scary. (And Pampe was like no, we’ve got hay right here, are you kidding me.)

Pampoldine took the rebuff philosophically. She didn’t look very traumatised by llama school, unlike Pampe who was extra annoying and elopey on days when she had to spend 5 min in the chute. Baby Poldine looked almost proud of herself !

Also unlike Pampe who sulked and avoided me for a while after every lesson, Poldine followed me when I went to give my last clementine peeling to Pirlouit, and tried to argue that she was more deserving of it.

And finally, when I looked back on my way home I saw that all the animals were outside the corral finishing the hay, except Poldine who had gone back inside all by herself and was curiously examining the chute she was stuck in 10 min before, like “what was that about”

So, a very positive first lesson! Poldine was such a good girl, and the drastic contrast with 2019 is another confirmation of what all of us already suspected (Pampe is Pampe.)