Goodbye Cinderella

Cinderella’s fair godmother finally swooped in to whisk her off to her new life. Cindy and Grace were both neglected and ended up in the foster care system (S.E.L.R) which is how we found them. We formally adopted Grace and didn’t really mean to get two llamas, but when we got Grace they asked if we had space for a second llama as a foster. Cindy needed somewhere safe to go to get healthy and start becoming more comfortable around people. We were happy to take her in. We ended up keeping her for a couple of years, but we decided not to adopt her because, well, Grace wasn’t very nice to her. Grace always acted like she would rather be left alone, but Cindy followed her everywhere. Grace wouldn’t share her food and often spat at Cindy if she got too close. We decided that Cindy would be happier if she could eventually move to a farm where she had a larger flock of friendlier llamas to hang out with.

It took a while, but finally someone decided to adopt Cindy and earlier this month a SELR volunteer came to the farm to pick Cindy up and take her to her new home (in TN, I think). As we were walking her to the trailer we realized how far she has come from when she first arrived. When we first met Cindy she was very timid and skittish and if you touched her anywhere behind her shoulder she immediately kicked out, making her hard to handle! This time, she was calm and relaxed and didn’t kick any, no matter where she was touched. We were so proud of her! Hopefully her new owners will be able to continue to work with her to make her more comfortable around people and better behaved.

 

We weren’t sure how Grace would react to Cindy leaving. Would she be happy to have her annoying shadow gone? Would she miss her? The afternoon after Cindy left, Grace acted confused and kept looking around for her. You can tell she is distressed by the humming noise she is making.

 

After the first day, though, Grace decided that she didn’t mind being an only-llama.