J. and I took our show on the road last week and went to Alberta. We drove through crazy weather – freezing rain interspersed with blizzard – before popping out into sunshine.

At a hobby farm outside Edmonton, we hunkered down and did a whole lot of reading, cooking, walking, and watching movies on a big T.V. (if you’re a fan of zombie movies, watch Train to Busan – all the thrills and chills combined with such real, human drama that it left me in tears).

We also fed and loved up Aki, Ollie, Susan, Sandra, Jack and ChiChi – the farm’s collection of animals. It was so nice to be around a cat again (Ollie, a fearsome, ferocious kitten who was just beginning to explore the outdoors). I fussed over him so much that J. changed his ringtone to my ‘kitty-kitty-kitty, kitty-kitty-kitty’ one evening during wine-time on the relaxing, wide verandah.

Mowat came with us too (at the host’s invitation, of course) but we sent him to military camp (ie. a nearby kennel) pretty quickly because he simply would not stop chasing the goats and horses and even encouraged bad behaviour in Aki, the other dog who was readily peer-pressured, despite being enormous.

That dog of ours – his resilience has allowed him to survive and thrive despite surgeries on both knees leading to gradually worsening arthritis but it’s also enabled him to just jump up and keep barking after getting kicked in the ribs by a horse. Seriously.

The excursion out west was our first house-sit through Trusted Housesitters and has now got me hooked (I may even apply to care for the place with the six Black Labs and five geese in Ireland…).

If you’re curious about how Trusted Housesitters works, I’ll tell you: join the site for a fee, apply for sits, and travel the world looking after other people’s houses and meeting lots of friendly, furry (scaly, hairy, feathered or finned) critters along the way. Win-win!! If you’re interested, click here for more information and/or to sign up (you get a discount if you sign up through this link and we get free months – another win-win:).

I’ll leave you with a few shots of the experience, including some from our glorious drive home last weekend through stunning Saskatchewan prairie.