April 24, 2009: A Home at Last
This week has seen a number of milestones for us. Yesterday we celebrated one year of living in Wales. We left Scotland to come work on the World Sheepdog Trials for a couple of months, and just haven't left. It is reminiscent of our time in Canada. We planned to stay in Canada for 4 years, the time required to complete Ph.D. degrees, and stayed 17 years. We tolerated Canadian winters by taking to cross-country skiing and snowshoeing but when we got dogs and couldn't work sheep 12 months of the year, we were out of there.

For the last year we have been living at the home of Mike and Nora Hemmings in a small but picturesque village of Llanfynydd. No, we still have not mastered the correct pronunciation of our home village. LL sounds like 'cl', f is the sound of a 'v' (ff is an f sound), and dd is a 'th' sound. The sheer number of consonants in many Welsh words makes our heads spin, but we are trying...

Mike and Nora are two of the nicest people on the planet. How they have put up with us and our menagerie of dogs and chickens is beyond comprehension! They have generously shared their home (we live above them in a small flat), their family and their sheep. They have taught us a few things about Welsh rural culture...and have been the subject of many of our blogs. We think their kids and grandkids secretly like this. We have introduced the internet to them, although we have failed in converting them fully and they have yet to purchase their first computer (note to their kids...future Christmas present?). We have got them as far as a digital photo frame!

It has been a fun year, thanks largely to the friendship of Mike and Nora...our best yet in the UK, despite our ongoing struggles to find ourselves a home. But, this is the second milestone of the week.

We have finally done the deal on a new home and move in a month. YIPPEE! Purchasing a property in the UK is absolutely torturous and made that much more unbearable by the crisis in the financial sector and the downturn in the economy. The last 3 months has been incredibly stressful as we have struggled to deal with the UK banking sector. Service is not something that comes naturally to UK financial institutions! We won't dwell as we want to repress these memories as fast as possible! Suffice to say, we can take a deep breath now, secure in the knowledge that we have at last found a home...and a home that we will be sharing with fellow herding enthusiasts and friends. Now all we have to do is figure out how to pay for it! Reality will hit hard...our UK 'holiday' is over and life of the working poor begins!

We have actually purchased two properties. The first is a cottage plus 4 acres, and the second is 66 acres of farmland which adjoins the first property. This farmland backs onto the southern edge of the Brecha forest so we'll have plenty of running terrain for ourselves and the dogs. Perhaps this will give us the incentive to get back into running on a more regular basis. London marathon here we come? Perhaps we'll start with more modest aspirations. We saw a 5km 'Chocolate' run in Brecon where each finisher received a gift of chocolate. Perfect for Angie!

Oh, one of the best things about the new home is that we will only be living about 10 miles away from Mike and Nora. For sure they will be regular visitors to our place and vice versa. Afterall, Mike will need some training tips if he has any chance of ever beating us again in the nurseries. Ha ha ha! Of course once we have a large enough flock of sheep of our own, we will be holding trials at our place, that's for sure. Might just take a couple of years before we are in a position to do this but it is definitely on the cards. Nothing like home field advantage.

Just to make this week even more special was the fact that we have had fabulous weather all week long. We dared to wear shorts two days in a row. It wasn't a pretty sight with our lilly white legs but at least we don't live near civilisation so only Mike and Nora got to witness this. All of the dogs got out for walks and the pups have been out on a few mole catching excursions with Kelvin.

Off trialling tomorrow. Angie and Jamie have been working on their whistles and MIGHT make their first trial appearance together tomorrow. It might not be pretty as they are not quite together on the whistling front, but it'll be a bit of fun...and that's what trialling is all about. Meg will have a run as well with Angie, and Kelvin is going to run his young bitch, Tina, and also Blade. Blade has struggled through the winter as we learnt he has a dysplastic hip and is starting to show signs of arthritis from this. With the warmer weather he is running better but his work load has been significantly reduced.

Happy trialling and training, folks.