Arrived safely in Canada on April 9th and made my way without incident to Ottawa where Sian collected me from the bus station. I had originally hoped to set out from Trois Rivieres at the weekend but as usual there have been the usual frustrations which held me up for a week, the main one being that I have not been able to sort out insurance for the truck yet. This has made it very difficult to make preparations as I have been reliant on long suffering souls such as Sian and neighbour Sonny Ebstein to give me lifts here and there. However I opened a bank account with Royal Bank of Canada (easy) and reactivated my cell phone account (ridiculously problematic) and also managed to look at a couple of possible second horses, one being a lovely Cremello quarter horse mare. Quiet, amenable and a responsive ride, she seemed a strong contender, but had a nasty cough which turned out to be COPD (a lung disease) so it was back to the drawing board.
The weather has been glorious since I arrived, and I woke up every morning to the sun pouring through the window and the honking of geese flying north to their summer quarters.
Lady has wintered very well and is looking distinctly tubby though I am sure her hay belly will trim down once we are on the road - Sebastien took a spin on her in the indoor school but it did not seem to have much effect...
Today Jacques Charlesbois trailered Lady and me back to the bridge over the St Lawrence river where we finished in 2014 - but this time the north side. Sebastian and Lucas also came along for the ride....
After a couple of hours riding along the river.....
....Lady was given a corral at the Berthaume Canadian horse stud, courtesy of Michel, shown here with two of his harness geldings.
I bedded down in the barn behind and was treated to a welcome 'home delivery' of a very tasty hamburger brought out by Michel, who also sent me off with packed lunch the next morning!
No comments:
Post a Comment