BAS Judge Training Level 1 at Toft

What a week preparing for hosting  the British Alpaca Society Level 1 Judge training course. Linda our herds woman and our new trainee herds woman Freya seemed to be running around for days humping hurdles, clearing shedsand shuffling and selecting alpacas in preparation for the selection day last Thursday. Even Linda's daughter Gemma got roped in on her day off to lend a hand- thanks Gemma.

All in all we had to have well over 60 alpacas available in all colours age groups and quality to enable the teaching classes to be put together. 

The Judge tutors Liz Barlow and Nick Harrington Smith rocked up on Thursday to scrat through the groups to select the teaching and test classes. Jay Holland of Pure alpacas rocked up with a small group of coloured Suris to compliment the classes we put together from our own herd. Shirley seemed  to have been making lists for weeks coordinating the groups for the selection of the classes and as always she did a fantastic job enabling the selection day to run like a Swiss watch.

The delegates arrived at the crack of sparrows on the Friday and were put through their paces by the Judge Tutors all day Friday and Saturday. By a sheer stroke of luck the weather which was forecast to be horrendous passed us by and although we didn't see a lot of sun the weather held off until,after the course was over. 

A huge thanks to all the handlers who gave freely of their time, skill and patience in handling the classes to enable the delegates to get to grips with their methodology.  So a big Toft thanks to Shirley Isseyegh of Merrifield Alpacas, Peter Young and his son Chris of   Top House Alpacas, Angela Churcher of Hayes Alpacas, Jan Penny of Penn Alpacas and Liz Davies of Snapdragon Alpacas- all of whom worked tirelessly with great humour to make the event a success.

Jay and I were observing with the intention of teaching the course in future and it was a fascinating couple of days in which all the delegates seemed to gain confidence and ability as the course progressed. Well done to you all and I hope you enjoyed it as much as we did.

Linda worked herself to a standstill over the week and I would lay bets the she almost fell asleep in her dinner on Saturday evening. Thanks Linda and well done Team Toft for making this a very successful event.