Karen's alpacas: HAPPY NEW YEAR

Well here we are in 2012 ... got a good sound to it I think, I prefer years with even numbers - I wish us all a very happy, healthy, lucky, wise and prosperous year.

Not been much going on here over the last couple of weeks, well not unless you count Christmas of course.... Rebecca and I had our usual holiday walk challenge - to take the dogs somewhere different every day, I think we managed it and we even discovered a few new walks, all within 2/3 miles of our village. We're very lucky that we live in such beautiful countryside with lots of footpaths and bridle paths to follow. Not so good is that the inside of my car is now covered in mud and Jazz's slobber - yuck.

One of our Xmas walks - looking out over the Meon Valley from Old Winchester Hill

We've done a bit of halter training on the weanlings, when they've been dry, they're coming along nicely now and beginning to walk after just a few 5 minute sessions. Keen to get the first batch going before we wean the next lot, which may be this week, depending on the weather, as I have to find something to do with a Vet student whose spending the day with us - can't make the poor girl pick up poo the whole day!

First both alpaca (Treasure) and handler (Rebecca) have to be relaxed!

I spent ages yesterday updating our website, always tricky, as I usually get something technical wrong - this time I couldn't understand why some of the links didn't work - only to learn that I had to refresh it's pages on my computer to get rid of the old cache - whatever that means! Anyway, our course dates are up on it - all very exciting - with 3 visiting Judges, Liz Barlow, Nick Harrington-Smith and Jay Holland all giving fantastic training days with us, lots of opportunity to learn masses about alpacas - plus our own Beginners Course - don't forget to refresh the page if you can't see them! www.mvalpacas.co.uk