Social media helps reunite Rigaud blacksmith with lost anvil

A Rigaud blacksmith has been reunited with his lost anvil after social media spread the word to the entire community.

Michael Appugliese lost his 45-kilogram iron tool last week after it fell off this trailer in nearby Hudson, leading to a frantic search and an appeal on Facebook.

It didn't take long for word to get around, he said.

"I was at a family dinner, when someone called and said heard about it though social media," he said.

However, one of the men who found it on the side of a road wasn't terribly technologically plugged-in.

He went around knocking on doors – literally – to ask if anyone heard of a blacksmith on a search for an anvil.

"People had heard the news by then. The first person he knocked on said, 'Oh my God, I know who it is,'" Appugliese said.

The anvil was an essential part of the Greystone Equine horse-riding school he runs with his wife in Rigaud, west of Montreal.

Appugliese was confident he'd find his anvil. Even though it cost him $1,000, it wouldn't fetch more than $50 at a scrap yard, he said.

He even kept his optimism through his wife's doubts.

"She's a West Island girl, so she doesn't trust Hudson. But Hudson is an honest place," he said.