Maggie's First Visit

Maggie is not being trained to be a therapy animal like Serena.  Her job will be to produce excellent fleece and excellent crias.  However, I did want my mother to see her in person and thought it would be a good experience for Maggie to get another trip in the van, so I took her over to the Brant Centre Long Term Care home on Good Friday for a visit - and boy, was she popular. 

I tend to forget the reaction of most people when they see an alpaca for the first time - especially when it's in a location like the front lawn of a nursing home.  As it was a warm, sunny, holiday weekend there were lots of visitors who all wanted to take a close look at Maggie.

Unfortunately, she doesn't have any experience with strangers wanting to touch her, so it was a bit unsettling for her.  However, it's the rare alpaca that won't get close when there are some treats on offer:

My sister Karen was a big help and got a nice reward from Maggie:

But look at this!  When we got back to the farm, we had to walk Maggie past Johnny Popper who reached over and took a big chunk of her lovely, once-in-a-lifetime cria fleece.  In this photo, a bit of Maggie is hanging out of Johnny Popper's mouth.  Maybe he was jealous that he didn't get to go anywhere.