planBE

Q is an easy keeper, but he needs his high quality hay to keep his girlish figure. In limited quantities of course. Having been at my current barn for 17 years, I have never worried about the quality of feed. If there is one thing about our barn owner, and previous barn manager (up to 18 months ago), she always prioritized horsemanship and quality feed (and dental work, etc). But hay has been of increasing concern in our marketplace for the last decade. Of course we would always hear the farmers say, it's a dry/wet year and the hay season is not going well. But there were a few extra fundamentals that have made a long-term impact: Long term drought conditions in Western Canada has restricted supply and grazing conditions for cattle in those provinces. Restricted grazing conditions on provincial land means that there was more pressure to purchase hay (both impacting demand and supply). Alfalfa cubes. While a wonderful transition of a low-cost to high-value crop, this represents a va...

I made my way home and crashed. For a few days of inexplicable fatigue and a weird rash on my arm, I figured it was "re-entry syndrome" which often plagues post wilderness travellers. And then like clockwork, on day 5 I started having cold/flu symptoms. I tested negative for Covid, but whatever respiratory illness it was hit me like a freight train leaving a lingering cough in its wake. I rested, I quarantined, my husband making sure I was keeping up with meals, hydration, meds and pushing me to move around once I started feeling better. We waited an extra week for my husband to get sick, but nope ... he was perky and feeling good. I finally started riding Q after a long rest and found that my dragon had emerged. We had some pretty disastrous rides, with him bouncing all over like a mad energizer bunny. He wanted to gallop everything, with big bold spooks at every stride. I kept shutting him down, and he kept getting frustrated. Finally, I cleared a day on my calendar and dec...

We were midway on what was to be our longest day. We had just met with the ground crew after a lovely swim across a river where my Nippissi greedily drank after four hours in the dry canyons. We dropped off one of our guides and switched it out to have one of the volunteers join us for the afternoon drive. We would be without help, water, or access to civilization for the next four hours. I chose to carry on. One of the guests bowed out. We followed our young intrepid guide up the road, and then crossed a gate. I remembered the stories told on the first night about accidents happening on this section. The gopher and badger holes create tripping hazards for the horses, and one very skilled rider and horse flipped over at a full gallop with the horse crushing the pelvis of the rider. The supposed lesson learned about this story is that we must pay attention, and if we feel ourselves fall to just let go. Other stories of rattlesnakes were told.  So here we were, following our leader t...

So we just crossed the mighty river, and we enter into the Police Coulee. I learn that the coulee means canyon river, and that hoodoos mean sandstone rocks. Most of this area is a combination of sandstone and lime, which makes for super interesting rock formations. The Police Coulee was named for the first Northwestern Mounted Police Outpost that was stationed between the river and the coulee, as an attempt to thwart bandits and smugglers entering the US/Canada border through these uninhabited badlands. There are no trails in this coulee. Just game tracks. Game tracks are common paths that are used by mule deer, antelope, foxes and other wild animals. This is not a trail. In fact, I would come to learn that these game tracks often get eroded by winter, storms, etc, and so they essentially disappear year to year.  We followed our two guides (father and son) as they would hunt for the best track on both sides of the stream, along the canyon walls. At first, I was a bit disconcerted a...