WARNING: Reading the following article might make you vulnerable to adopting a new dog!

Meet Buddy who is six years old! You wouldn’t know it from this picture, but Buddy’s life didn’t start out well. He was severely abused, often hit with shovels. Then Buddy was rescued by Inland Empire Golden Retriever Rescue (IEGRR). He is among hundreds of golden retrievers fostered back to health so they can be adopted out to families that nurture and love them.

By day (and sometimes by night), Carol Tompson is a microbiologist at Sacred Heart Hospital in Spokane. With the rest of her free time, though, she is the IEGRR intake coordinator who provides nurturing care and places golden retrievers with foster families and into permanent homes with compassionate people. She does this out of her love for animals and a real desire to protect them.

Because of a fund at Inland Northwest Community Foundation, IEGRR is a quarterly recipient of a donor-advised grant. A couple from Southwest Montana set up the fund specifically to assist IEGRR in doing the work they do. Carol says, “We are deeply appreciative to these funders. Without their financial assistance, there is no way we would be able to adopt out certain golden retrievers. Some of them require a great deal of medical care.”

The appreciation goes both ways. The founders say, “There are amazingly dedicated and hard-working people at IEGRR who always work on a shoestring budget, and we wanted to set up a fund to help them financially and make the dogs more adoptable.”

The couple that created the fund want to remain anonymous and clearly have a passion for these animals. They have personally committed themselves to adopting older dogs—8 years to 13 years old—because they know how difficult it can be to place these dogs. “They are wonderfully easy going animals, and we want to give them a home for as many weeks or months they have left.”

Talking to Buddy’s new family confirms the good work of IEGRR. “Carol Tompson is a doggie angel. She dedicates her life to helping dogs get the right homes so they have successful placement,” says Ingrid Kinder, Buddy’s ‘den mother.’ “It’s very rewarding to see these dogs thrive.”

Thriving is what Buddy is doing now and so is IEGRR, thanks to the fund that Inland Northwest Community Foundation manages.

For more information about adoptable dogs, you can visit their website at www.iegrr.org.