In praise of taking the shot

I love this time of year!   Every morning there is some new bit of greenery just bursting to let us now that real spring is just around the corner.  A few tulips here, a clump of tiger lilies there.... all belie the fact that the darned pussy willows are still stubbornly slow.
In the virtual world ... its a delight to see social networking being put to such good use for both owned and homeless pets.  It seems like every time I turn around this year, that lovely little bits keep popping up :)
Good resources such as The Nova Scotia Lost Dog Network , Lost and Found Cats and Nova Scotia Pet Events are there for pet owners.
Pretty much every rescue and shelter in the province has their own facebook page to promote their adoptables and engage support from volunteers and adopters.
AND ... rescues around the province have also been putting the event pages to great use as a vehicle to hold online auctions for their rescues.  In fact, that's become so popular that there now is a central Atlantic Canada Rescue Auction group to try to promote all of them !
Even better, most rescues now use facebook events to promote their fundraising events, for instance with :

• CAPS Day at the Mall
• CAPS May Dinner and Silent Auction
• Monthly Dog Walk for East Coast German Shepherd Rescue
• This Fall there is a Nova Scotia Integrative Health Pet Expo planned
• Right now there are tickets available on three lovely Easter Baskets ... proceeds going to Atlantic Small Dog Rescue
• ARC is holding a Country Music Show that promises to be a LOT of fun!
• The Yarmouth SPCA is holding an Adoption Fair on April 16th
• in June, the Nova Scotia SPCA is holding an Animal Wellness Conference
• and down the road, there is even a weekend workshop on Animal First Aid for Disaster First Responders being put on by DART

Best of all, are lovely bits like the blogs that Brock's foster Mums started to help him .. and now Bear ... find homes of their own!
Last but definitely not least is the lovely way that people are sharing petfinder links for adoptable pets.   They share .... their friends share and soon the right somebody sees the link and good things happen!   
It doesn't seem all that long ago that Nathan Winograd said "Social networking will affect every aspect of the animal welfare field in ways we have only begun to think about."   Now it has become as mainstream as facebook and twitter.
It is being used to help pet owners connect with resources, to keep pets with the people who already love them, to find homes for pets, to save lives at risk and to help those helping the animals fundraise to pay for it all!
Kind of frosting on the cake that whenever it is needed it allows the animal loving community to speak with one voice on any issue of concern to them!
At the end of the day, social networking is like any other tool and wouldn't be worth a thing if it wasn't put to good use!
You miss 100% of all the shots you never take   Wayne Gretsky