Photo by Ken Odor
Annette Thompson gets an appreciative lick from one of the many dogs she is currently caring for at her home in western Goochland.

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There’s just no two ways about it. The woman likes dogs.

And they like her.

“They followed me home even when I was a little kid,” said Annette Thompson last week at her home in western Goochland.

“All I am is a woman with a whole lot of dogs,” said Thompson, who has a kennel license for her operation, called Pet Rescue Foundation, a 501 (c (3) organization.

On this afternoon Thompson had to interrupt her interview several times to corral dogs that had managed to escape from the kennel.

But it’s all apart of a day’s work to Thompson, who has an answer for those who ask her why she does it.

“People ask me why I do it and I say the government has programs for the poor. But for the pets all they have is a needle, a gas chamber or a bullet between the eyes,” said the plainspoken Thompson.

She works with two large rescue operations out of Northern Virginia to adopt out the scores of animals she has on her place.

“I do the vetting and the care and the two groups adopt the dogs out,” she explained.

Thompson said she manages to arrange for the adoption of about 75 dogs each year.

Many of the dogs she is caring for are lost or abandoned hunting dogs, said Thompson. And people bring dogs to her when they can no longer care for them, particularly elderly folks.

Recently a group of volunteers came out to her place to do repair work on the kennels and shelters.

“They got an amazing amount of work done,” said Thompson.

On this particular afternoon there’s a good bit of barking going on, what with a strange reporter prowling the premises, but despite the cacophony, Thompson said she gets along well with most of her neighbors.

In these tight economic times Thompson said that discarding pets is one way some folks deal with declining incomes.

That doesn’t sit well with her.

“It says in the Bible that God gave us dominion over the animals,” she said. “In return we are responsible for their well-being.”

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