Back to (dog) school

With Jim back in the UK on a course for the next fortnight, I'm home alone on the prairie this week, but fortunately with more than enough to occupy me!

Macy started a new term at puppy school on Thursday. Before the summer she graduated from puppy pre-school and will now spend the next eight Thursday evening's doing the canine equivalent of Grade 1. In her class are our good friend's MaryAnne & Ed and their dog Reggie. Rather handy for sharing lifts, but as we discovered last week, rather distracting for Reggie when he's trying to learn AND show off to his best puppy buddy!

Also in the class was the owner of a young collie who seemed to have mistakenly wandered into our group with a fully trained performing dog. Whilst the rest of us were patiently running through "sit" and "leaveit", she was showing off polished performing skills worthy of Britain's Got Talent! Nobody likes a show off, so lets hope she gets moved up a class!

Also in our group was an employee from BATUS called Michelle. Now Michelle and I speak everyday when she calls BFBS to enter the competition I do on the radio show. However despite this, we've never actually met, which was somewhat confusing because she recognised my voice when I appeared in class and came up to say "Hi" to me. This resulted in a very embarrassing moment of zero physical recognition from me whilst I tried to fathom out why she was so earnestly and enthusiastically greeting me!

Meanwhile, autumn continues to add it's vibrant colours to the village pallet. I have been kidding myself a little that it has arrived later than last year, but after looking through some photos, I realised that it was a year ago this weekend, that we visited Dinosaur Provincial Park in shorts and t-shirts and returned in the afternoon to take photos of the village with brilliant blue skies and striking yellow trees. So the seasonal shift is running to schedule!

Top photo in this post today is courtesy of Nikki Balldock, another army wife here at BATUS. It's me during the pre-calf roping brief at the rodeo.

'Little House On The Prairie' goes to print

This month Little House On The Prairie goes to print, as this blog becomes a monthly column in Downland Village Magazine (see left.) So a warm welcome to any new readers in the Chichester area who has just discovered this site.

As I mentioned in one of my earlier posts, here on the Albertan prairie there are signs all over the village that autumn has arrived. I went out at the weekend to take a photo of one tree I had noticed turning golden and found, when I started looking, that there were actually several.

It's astonishing how quickly the weather has changed from the debilitating heat of three weeks ago, to nights which now touch freezing point.

The above ground pools that popped up in gardens over the summer are all being drained and packed away for the winter and once again the village social life has started to revolve around the ice arena, which after a summer without ice, was opened up again last week.

The second year ladies team (who I played for last year) are in hockey school this week and the season begins in earnest at the end of September.

Having had my turn on the ice last year and lived to tell the tale, I have decided this winter to spend more time on another great Canadian past time - quilting. We have an excellent teacher in the village and although Jim is utterly baffled by the concept of spending hours cutting up fabric, to only spend more hours sewing it back together. I must say I am rather enjoying it!

This week Macy also starts the canine equivalent of first grade at obedience school in Medicine Hat. On our last course we were one of only two dog owners who managed to complete the course, so it will be interesting to see if this group have better sticking power!

5c and raining!

Lots of cold damp weather this week and to make matters worse the boiler in our house has been condemned, so we are without heating! I've been making lots of cakes in the kitchen to provide an excuse to run the oven to keep us warm. We are of course living on top of Alberta's most profitable gas field, so our gas is very cheap! (not something you want to hear in the UK right now, I know!)

Thankfully despite the rumours circulating the village that snow is on the way, it seems the opposite is true and temperatures should be back up to 27c next week... but in Canada, you never know!

Still, at least the bad weather has provided lots of opportunities to stay inside and plan the road trip we are doing with my parents. We have finalised our route and the stops we will make and the map of the right shows where we will be going. (click on it to see it full size)

First port of call is Elkwater, Alberta, then down across the border into the US and Great Falls, Montana. On to St Mary, Montana, back into Canada and on to Waterton Park in Alberta, across to British Columbia to visit Fernie (our favourite winter haunt) and finally to Kootenay and a place called Nipika.

We seem to be scraping into every stop just as the shutters are being pulled down for the end of the season. We are hoping we won't be too late in the year to dine at our favourite Italian restaurant in Waterton town!

Calf Roping video

More video for you. This is the long-awaited footage of the ladies team calf roping at the Ralston Rodeo. Yes, one of our team really was dressed as a cow!

http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=lZogsLQQFWM

Autumn in the air

There is an unmistakable whiff of autumn in the air in the village this week. The days are becoming cooler, the leaves crisper and to cap it all, the ice is going down in the arena next week, ready for the hockey season to begin.

I have resisted some gentle persuasion and decided not to play hockey again this year. I have achieved my tick in the box and I remember all too well trudging out in the snow every week for games and training sessions that sometimes didn't end till 10pm, so I think I will use my time to finish off the quilt I started last winter.

Last but not least for this quick midweek update. Two video clips for you. Firstly, I put together a little video montage of our first year a few weeks ago. I've been playing around with iMovie on my Mac and the results are quite good...

And secondly, this short video clip of the rodeo last weekend. It was shot on my new gadget, a really dinky thing called a Flip. It sure beats the days of lugging round a betamax video camera!

Dog sitting

Another week has passed on the prairie and first mention this week should go to Blackie the cat, who has had a stressful week as we have been dog-sitting a 2 year-old black Labrador, who for her own safety, she had to avoid for the entire week!

Despite this invasion of her home she continues to do excellent pest-control work. Apologies to the squeamish amongst you, but Blackie is a quite astonishingly good hunter and unlike many domestic cats, does not spend ages playing with her catches, but rather dispatches them quickly and then eats them in their entirety! I know that cats catching animals is frowned upon these days, but I'm sure eating local produce is much more "carbon neutral" than me providing her with tinned processed cat food. (I would, but she prefers to eat out!)

Our canine house guest, Hector, left on Saturday afternoon to fly on to meet his owners at their new posting in Germany and once we'd recovered from the devastation of having two dogs for the week (see top right!) we had a few friends over for a barbecue. It was an absolute feast with some obligatory Albertan beef and some huge crabs legs. We were stuffed!

Amongst our guest at the barbecue were Shane, Doug & Ed who were the winning Gentleman's Calf Roping team at the rodeo last weekend. All three were wearing their rodeo belt buckles (worth $300 each) and feeling justly proud of their achievement. Shane has been in the winning team two years running, not bad for a British army officer with no prior experience of ranching skills!

This morning, as has become the custom, we had more guests for banana pancake breakfast. As it's still quite hot (34c today) we drove the RV into the garden to provide shade. It did the job rather well! I'm really not sure what we'll do when the snow comes, it just won't be the same eating them round the dining room table with the heating on!

This weekend we've also found time to do some planning for our forthcoming road trip. My parents are flying out at the end of September and we're heading over the boarder into Montana and then round to Waterton Glacial Park and on to Nipika. We'll be taking the RV and they'll be staying in hotels. We should have a fair amount to blog about I think!

Ralston Rodeo

Yesterday was the Ralston Rodeo. As you will be aware from my last post, I was one of three women who made up the first all female entry for the Gentleman's Calf Roping event.

Earlier this week "The Prairie Lasses" had a training session from a couple of local ranchers who run the rodeo. We didn't get our hands on a live calf, but we had a dummy made from part of an old tyre and some piping and we used that to walk through the different moves, work out what each of us needed to do and practice the special calf roping knot (see photo on the right!)

So yesterday was our big day. The whole rodeo circus rolled into town and transformed the arena on the edge of the village. (see left) Calf Roping was one of the last events and as everything was running late, it was nearly 5pm before we got to have our moment in the ring!

My team mates Claire & Caz who had been roped into the event by me (no pun intended) were getting progressively more nervous throughout the day. There were two groups of 4 doing calf roping. We were in the first group and although each team had their go one at a time, we were all in the arena together awaiting our turn.

We were third to go and when the first two calves were let out of the traps into the arena Claire & Caz both started squealing and dragging me back towards the fence!

When our turn came, the adrenalin was pumping and my team mates were extremely nervous. The calf was let out and all hell broke loose!

Everyone forgot what they were supposed to do, Caz lost her nerve and I got kicked in the arm - BUT - we did manage to get the not-insubstantial beast on the ground and I had a good go at tying the knot. However the whole thing (which was 3 or 4 minutes at most) was so utterly physically draining that I had no strength left to bring the calves legs together for the knot, so in the end we had to admit defeat!

See the photo of us in action on the right. Caz & I wore dungarees from the local charity shop and Claire dressed as a cow "to confuse the calf". I am very proud of our efforts and the crowd absolutely loved us, so at least we entertained!

The whole thing was filmed, so I will post a link to that later in the week. In the meantime, see more photos of the day here

It's been a busy weekend all in all. On Friday, I celebrated my birthday and we went to see Cirque Du Soleil in Calgary. (see left) We spent five hours on the road just to have a night out, but it was good fun!

Jim celebrates his birthday on Monday too and we've got a canine house guest for the week, Jim's bosses dog is staying with us before flying on to a new posting in Germany - so no sign of things quietening down any time soon!