Hello. I am Annette Thompson, and Bone Voyage is the latest chapter in a story I have been living for thirty years.
In 1995, when the internet was barely a thing, I started adoption.com to connect children who needed families with families who needed children. It became one of the first adoption platforms online. But I did not stop at a website. I went and did the work in person.
I ran three orphanages, in Ethiopia, in Kenya, and in Haiti, in some of the hardest places on earth. And I did not just help place children with families. I adopted seven of them myself.
I have spent my whole adult life inside one stubborn question: how do you make sure the most vulnerable have a permanent place to belong before the crisis hits, not after?
That work has a name. Permanency planning. You never wait for a child to land in an emergency and then scramble for a home. You find the people first. You match a specific child to a specific family, and you do the slow, careful work of making sure it will hold.
From children to senior dogs
From 2019 to 2024, that same passion took the shape of Bone Voyage Dog Rescue, a 501(c)(3) that gave senior and street dogs along the US and Mexico corridor a second chance. We placed hundreds of dogs who would otherwise have had none.
The rescue itself has closed. But along the way, one gap became impossible to ignore. The exact problem I spent my life closing for children is wide open for senior dogs. When an older person dies or can no longer cope, their dog is so often left to chance, and senior dogs are the hardest of all to place.
Nobody does the matching part. Nobody finds the willing, vetted human in advance and lets the relationship become real before anyone needs it.
What Bone Voyage is now
Today, Bone Voyage is two things. It is a warm, science-informed resource for anyone caring for an older dog. And it is the home of the backup-adopter promise: a movement to match senior dogs with a real person who agrees, in advance, to love them when their owner no longer can.
We are not a rescue anymore, and we do not ask for donations. We are here to hand people over 50 a calm, doable plan, and the care guidance to go with it.
The people behind the work
The mission is led by me, drawing on three decades of permanency work. Our veterinary guidance has been shaped with the help of Dr. Cheri Honnas, who served as a veterinary advisor to Bone Voyage and helped ground our care content in real clinical judgment.
Everything we publish is written in plain English, cited when we make a health claim, and held to a simple test: does this help an older adult keep their dog, comfortable and loved, for life?
I spent thirty years making promises like this for the most vulnerable children I could reach. I am not done. I am just widening the circle.
Annette Thompson, founder