GRREAT Beginnings Lead to Happy Endings T
hirty years ago! In the summer of 1990, a small intrepid group of volunteers set out to establish a golden retriever rescue. Many of them were already involved with the breed through adopting, training, and breeding. They were saddened by the number of goldens that were turning up at shelters abandoned by their owners. When the local organization began in mid1990, it was operating as an extension of GRREAT in Maryland, and it did not become fully operational until September of that year. GRREAT was also an extension, in their case of Potomac Valley Golden Retriever Club. Rescues were not a ‘thing’ in the early days. Kathy Carbone, who was on the planning committee for GRREAT in Maryland, paid it forward and mentored the early volunteers of the southeastern branch. We owe our name to them as well as they felt Golden Retriever Rescue, Education and Training encompassed all of the things critical to the mission of the rescue, and they already knew the dogs were gr-r-eat!
By February of 1991, however, they were recognized as a separate entity for conducting day-to-day business with a local checking account, phone number, and address. The phone, attached to an answering machine, was 827-8561 (still our hotline number today). The official mailing address was PO Box 8014, Yorktown, VA, 23693; and it still is today. However, they remained accountable to GRREAT and were required to send them monthly reports. It took quite a while for shelters to work with the rescue, and they were required to pay shelter adoption fees to pull the dogs. Initially, the dogs were coming from the Peninsula shelter, but a top priority was to extend their reach to the south side and build relationships with Norfolk and Virginia Beach SPCAs. There were also puppies for sale from backyard breeders in the classified section of
by Sharon Leeman
the newspaper. They did their best to educate those breeders on ethical breeding using materials from the Golden Retriever Club of America (GRCA). By October 1992, there was a real push on to get volunteers in Chesapeake and Portsmouth on the south side and in Williamsburg and Richmond to the north. There was always a need for foster homes (they suggested families think of it as “babysitting an orphan”), but lots of other jobs too as work began to expand from the core officers into other coordinator positions. As for home visits, a key question they asked their evaluation team to think about was “Would I leave my dog here?”
At the beginning, all funds and reports were going to GRREAT, permitting donations to be tax deductible from the start. Records were kept separate as SEVA GRREAT had to submit three years of income and expenses to the IRS to complete the paperwork for the non-profit status, which we maintain to this day.
As much as things change, others stay the same. The first adoption fee was set at $150 based on the estimated cost of $150 to $250 to rescue each dog and have their medical needs taken care of. Now they vary depending on age and whether the golden comes from a domestic situation or is an international dog, but they are still set up to cover a portion of what it costs us to rescue a dog (approximately $1,500 today). In an early newsletter, they reported that several of their dogs had special medical needs that would cost extra money. One had a bone chip floating in his shoulder and needed surgery. His name was Bobby, and after his recovery, he was adopted by one of our current board members.
From the beginning, they were taking in about 2 goldens each week. By January 1991, they had rescued 20 dogs, 17 of them from the Peninsula SPCA. Twelve of the 20 were placed in loving homes, 3 were old timers who would live out their days with SEVA GRREAT (today’s forever fosters), and the rest were still in temporary foster homes.
The newsletters of 1991 were filled with adopted dogs, dogs available for adoptions, and on occasion a memorial for one who had crossed the Bridge. We still share those things today but use different ways to report them. They could only afford a one-page newsletter and their editor worked to get as much information in it as possible; we have
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SOUTHEASTERN VIRGINIA GOLDEN RETRIEVER RESCUE, EDUCATION & TRAINING, INC.
