Wednesday, December 14, 2011

Three wishes for the season.

I love having the woodstove on a day like this!   What's not to love?   It is comfy and cozy and cheerful in a way that no other heat source can compete with!   Even better, by being the best medicine around for my arthritis, it also keeps my middleaged self off that merry go round of meds that so many my age are stuck on!   
Best of all of course is that it was well worth the investment!    Setting aside the fact that it has paid for itself many times over, it was money well spent to go the extra mile for an energy efficient model!
Wood heat becomes even cheaper when one uses less wood, eh? It is just frosting on the cake that is also indirectly saves me money because it IS more work!   After all,  all that darned piling and stacking and putting away is pretty good exercise, eh?
But I am wandering afield .. as I often do in my meandering way!   Not every dog and cat will be able to curl up by a comfy fire on a cold day like this.  In fact ... this is the kind of weather that has stray cats coming to doorsteps hoping for a kind heart.
The lucky ones will gain entree and have a fresh start.  They will have more loyalty than anyone can imagine for that second chance .... and will happily trade their testicles for domestic bliss.
Not every cat will land on its feet quite so well.   Others will find food and shelter with kind hearts who are unable to afford the spay or neuter.   Not every kind heart will live in an area where low cost spay neuter is available.   Until this is available to every resident in our province, the cat over population issue will continue to be a self perpetuating problem. 
I have occasionally found the unluckiest ones when we have been out in the woods ... sad proof that domestic pets were never meant to manage on their own in the wild.
So that is wish one ... that a provincial government that can see its way clear to spend a couple million to save an art school for the short term would wake up to the long term savings of assisting with a good provincial SNAP.
One of the best bits about being retired is being able to go out to the woods with my good dogs.    Weather seldom slows us down ... because of course we can look forward to coming back into a comfy warm house.
The dog on my sidebar was a senior before he had a shot at domestic bliss.  It was not until Noah's elderly owner passed away that PET Projects was able to rescue him and offer him a better life!
Nova Scotia will not truly be a good place to live until our provincial and municipal governments are willing to acknowledge that sentencing companion animals to life on the end of a chain is more than inhumane ... it is a dangerous practice that creates dangerous communities for our children.
So that is Wish Two ... that anti tethering legislation comes sooner rather than later.
If there is one constant in beautiful Nova Scotia, it is that each and every municipality is unique and different.  Because of this, there are as many different arrangements for Animal Control as their are towns and counties!
In these days of budget cutbacks, it is not realistic to expect this to change.  
Yet we will never get to No Kill Nova Scotia until there is a measure of legislated protection for those who come into the care of any AC ... or its contractors ... in this province
So that is Wish Three .... that provincial legislation be passed to protect all AC intake by requiring that pictures of all impounded animals be posted publicly ... and to prohibit the killing of any animal that has not been offered to rescue.
I know that's a pretty tall order ... but everything on my wish list is "an achievable objective".  
A few years ago, I bought another woodstove .. this time for my workshop.  Well .. imagine my surprise to find out how much more expensive stoves had become!     I expect if I was to go pricing them now, they would be pricier still.
Kind of like my three wishes!  They are not going to get any cheaper a few years from now, eh?  They probably won't cost as much as the fifty million spent on the south shore, but odds are they will yield more return in the long run.
What time is it?   It is always time to remember that one of the virtues of living in a democracy is being able to let the politicians we elect on all levels know how we would like them to spend our tax dollars.
And that is how I see it on Wednesday, December 14th .... the TWENTY -EIGHTH day since the dismissed shelter manager and the disbanded board created the renegade shelter.

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