I know as I fill the pages up with Life in Spedden … the excitement and fast pace causes envy among my peers and relatives but hey someone has to live here.
Now that spring has finally come Dan and I are getting back to riding our horses. Now we can ride 4 of our 7 horses. The middle of this month Genny and Houdini are going away for training and then in early July Legalas will be going. When they come back I think we will sell Cinnamon, Zeke and Sassy. Lately it seems we take Jag because he is such a joy to ride. He stands until you get up on him and for me that is a real bonus. I don’t climb on as fast as I used to! And then we’ve been taking Zeke or Buddy (Steve’s horse)
On Friday we went for a ride and decided to take Cinnamon because we havn’t rode her since last fall. I was a little unsure of the outcome but she saddled up fine and being the loving wife that I am… I felt it would be best if Dan got on first … (just in case) Anyway I rode Jag to start and Dan rode Cinnamom. She was a little ansi but more or lest settled in to the ride. Since it was her first ride we decided to confine her to the road allowance and do the block around the section where we live. When we got down the road a mile Dan and I switched places and I was now riding Cinnamom. She wanted to run but we decided to take it slow the first time around.
Around our place there is a fair amount of bush and the road that goes north on the east side of the section is pretty quiet except on Wednesdays and Sundays when the dump is open. We live about 3 miles from the dump. So we decided to take this road as it would be quiet and we shouldn’t run into any problems.
We’d gone about a mile from home when we come up over a hill and I saw a black dog come out of the bush. Only it was kinda big for a black dog. Oh yes you got it … a bear.  So we stopped and kinda waited to see what direction the bear was going to take when we looked in the field across the road and saw her two cubs scratching at a tree. At that point Dan and I kind of decided that we should maybe head back in the opposite direction. Of course at about the same time we turned the horses they got a whiff of the bears and they had no problem turning around. We kept them at a walk as best we could and Jag listened quite well but Cinamon was going home and none to happy about taking it slow. It kind of gives you a scary feeling with a mama bear behind you and horse that would just as soon leave you than carry you. We have a trail through the woods that cuts accross the end of one quarter that is quite open so we thought to take that … Cinnamon wanted no part of this trail .. I’m not sure if she felt confined or what but she was one unhappy camper. She can back up as fast as she can run and when she gets excited and you try and hold her back … she goes backward in a semi circle until she is backing up in the direction she wants to go. And if that dosn’t work she’ll back you up into a tree and hope to brush you off. What she hasn’t figured out yet is that her butt hits the tree first! Well she tried rearing up a few times and was getting quite agiated when I decided that I would be safer on foot … Bear and all.
So I did get off and walk through that part of the woods but I was kind of looking over my shoulder expecting to see Mama bear rambling my way. Black bears are usually more afraid of you but who can predict what a Mama bear will do. We did survive.
Today being Sunday I went to the dump to get rid of my household garbage and catch up on all the gossip. Oh yes … Life in Spedden includes Sunday at the dump! The guy who runs the place is quite nice and knows quite abit about the area so I told him about the Mama bear and two cubs. Oh yes he says … she holes up in the old barn on that road. So it is very reasurring to know that we have a mama bear that lives about 3/4′s of a mile from us. makes us wonder is we still want to plant all those Saskatoon trees!