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Here is our first newsletter from New Zealand. We arrived safe and sound on October 7th in Auckland. After some days we traveled by train to Wellington (it took us 12 hours) and are more or less settled now in the Wellington area.
The last three weeks were very intensive: finding a rental home, a rental car (and buying one), getting used to the New Zealand language (which is quite different from the English English, funny accent), visiting recruitment agencies and buying our groceries.
On November 13th we will receive the key of our more permanent address in Kelson, a small village of appr. 2000 inhabitants on the top of a hill. Some two weeks later our belongings will arrive. So, we decided to buy some new things as a coffee machine, a toaster, a vacuum cleaner (ours was left in Holland), some china, glasses, etc.
Our sundeck has both a sea and hill view. Some small white stones on the hills were moving all the time; they seemed to be sheep!!
It was rather difficult to find us a rental house where Cassy was welcome. Fortunately the real estate agent was very helpful and he convinced the landlord that Cassy is a very sweet dog, hardly barks, and is well behaved. How could he know, Cassy didn’t even arrive by then. But: he told the truth!
After several challenges, Cassy finally arrived on October 20th in the quarantine kennel in Levin. The owners, John and Denise Clark, are wonderful people and they really love pets. Their entire life is dedicated to dogs. John and Denise both are all breed judges. And on top of that: they are also breeders of Kerryblue Terriers. John and Denise and their staff take very good care of our beloved Cassy. We visited him four times already, the first two times he cried over one hour after we left. Today we were told that he is getting more comfortable now; he didn’t cry the last time! That makes us feel comfortable as well.
Last weekend we met David and Kirsty. We know Kirsty from the IWS list and Cilia had intensive e-mail contact with her. They are friends already! Kirsty is originally from Scotland and knows what difficulties we can meet. She was so kind to tell us all kinds of things, and is very helpful with all tips and tricks, do’s and don’ts. David and Kirsty have lots of dogs (Soft Coated Wheatens, King Charles Spaniels, Cavelier Spaniels and just one Glen of Imaal Terrier), but (still) no IWS. They will wait until Cassy mated a bitch. David is an all breed judge, like Denise and John Clark. Although they know each other, they are no friends (understatement!). On the other hand: David and Kirsty encouraged us to let Cassy do his quarantine duties in this kennel. And to be frank: we are very happy with their advice. The quarantine facility is superb.
Talking about mating: last weekend customers of John and Denise were in the quarantine kennel and saw Cassy. They told a friend of them - owner of an IWS in Auckland - that a new IWS arrived in New Zealand. One day later an email arrived at the kennel, asking whether Cassy was available to mate her bitch! Not seen yet, but already interested. We will find out what kind of a bitch it is, to be sure that the combination is OK. Of course we’ll check out Michael and Annelies Roeterdink’s IWS database to find out the blood lines.
Well, folks, that’s it for the moment. In three weeks Cassy will arrive home and we are looking forward to hug him in our new home then.