Navigating the obstacles

Going to the woods every morning is definitely one of the best bits of the day. The old growth trees provide a canopy of cool relief in the summer and shelter from the harshest winds on a day like this. Even so, there are still sometimes fallen trees to navigate around on a day like this.
It never means turning around and going back home, just that we must navigate a detour through the underbrush until we are back on the trail. Rain or shine or snow we still head out. We might not be able to navigate all the trails, but we still go.
Why do we do this? Besides the fact that its fun for me and the dogs? We go every day because the exercise keeps my heart and my arthritis much more manageable. The alternative is an unthinkable merry go round of medicines that would create a whole new set of health issues for me.
The road to No Kill Nova Scotia is a bit like that. Its not always as straight forward as going from point A to B. Here in Nova Scotia, we have been very lucky to have a few hardworking groups who have embraced the No Kill philosophy. They have done great work and have saved many many lives. For a long time the society was the biggest stumbling block on the path. Deliberately undermining progress while paying lip service with no kill jargon. Since this summer we have seen some real changes at the provincial level that are rippling out to many of the branches.
In the course of my work with the homeless pet project, I have been very impressed by how many pets the Metro Shelter has been listing on petfinder. Better still is the rate at which these pets are being adopted. I have been told that visiting the shelter is a much more user friendly experience these days..... I'll have to take their word for it because this trifocal wearing / no peripheral vision granny doesn't get on the highway to go the city : )
Its been a treat to see so many seniors get adopted since Metro embraced the November Adopt a Senior Pet Month with special incentives for adopting senior pets.
There are still a couple of very serious roadblocks on the way. Kings county should not have to rely on a couple of hardworking little TNR groups to do animal rescue, particularly while their beautiful shelter is still sitting empty a year after it was finished. And then of course there is the Cape Breton Branch.
Everytime I mull over the situation there, the questions seem to keep rolling in:

• the old familiar one always tops the list - is the shelter too small to meet both the AC and society functions?
• could the healthy adoptables be transferred down to Metro? Is there space/ room for that now that their own adoptions seem to be up?
• if there are no adopters in cb, maybe the sydney location is a big part of the problem. Should the CB branch be located closer to the causeway?
• Or maybe the society needs to help build a shelter/adoption center at antigonish which is more central and would get more traffic. Healthy adoptables from CB could be transferred in there. Antigonish is pretty central and makes a great halfway point from Sydney to Dartmouth. The adoption center could also help the Truro Branch find homes for its adoptables too.

I once read in a leadership manual that there are no problems, there are only solutions waiting to be discovered. There will be a solution in time to the roadblocks to No Kill Nova Scotia. The beautiful thing is that the more crowded the path gets, the more achievable solutions there will be. Its a refreshing change of pace to see more of the society on the path at all, when for a long time there have only been isolated beacons of hope.

The alternative is unthinkable.