Beware of the dog

As we pulled up at the gate in Bridge Pa we were greeted with a sign saying “beware of the dog”…. we looked at eachother and agreed that if we didn’t like it here we would leave after a week. No problem.  We drove in and then we were met by the 2 ferocious doggies who attacked us with wiggly bottoms and sloppy kisses.  Ferocious.

We walked up to the house and met Mick and Sue, who I’m pretty sure were also wondering what they were getting into, inviting a Dutch family into their home.  😜Here’s the who’s who:

Mick – the boss/Scottish😜/house b*tch

Sue – the real boss/the famous Sue Thompson/supreme roast cooker

Jake – farrier/4* eventer/nutter who gets on young horses/eye candy for the girls 🤣

Eeva – 3rd musketeer/likes to schwim 😜

KJ – he’s the man!!/protector of Rose

Bella – belly rub lover/protector of Thijs

We ended up staying 3 months 😊 with a house sitting stint in between and a few weeks at another place, each time coming back to Mick and Sue.  We now consider them friends for life…..we had a fantastic time there, working with the race horses was an amazing experience – a very different world to show jumping I can tell you!  We all learned a lot, me I learnt how to ride a race horse (bloody short stirrups and those horses are trained to pull!) and TJ aka Monty Roberts had fun training the young horses and throwing Jake on them as quickly as possible.  We made lots of friends at the track and at shows, hunting etc the whole “horsey” community welcomed us and were fascinated by our “story” and why we are in New Zealand.

There are a few favorite horses we will never forget: Squeak (very moody mare but she loves me really), TJ refused to touch 🤣🤣, Zed (the most arrogant horse in the world who basically does whatever he wants, but I love him!) and George (the cheeky eventer who should really know better).  Oh and gorgeous Blondy who we both fell in love with, thank goodness that big boy doesn’t really know how big he is yet.  I had the pleasure of riding them and others either at the track or at home, and even more pleasure to see some of them race (and win!!).

Sue and Mick – thanks for the unforgettable experience!!  Thanks Mick for babysitting so TJ could come to the track too, Mick had it down to a fine art getting our kids under control (and teaching them some colourful language skills 😂😂😂 – just kidding you did your best!).

However much we loved it there, we still have just over 6 months left of our travels and we really need to see some of the South Island too.  So yesterday we said goodbye (well, we’ll see them next week at the races 😜) and know that we will definitely be seeing them again when we head back to Auckland later this year.

Next stop…Palmerston North where we are house sitting for 2 weeks. 😎

Laters! Kelly