Bone Voyage Dog Rescue ran from 2019 to 2024. In those years it moved street dogs out of Mexico and into permanent homes in the United States and Canada. It is not operating any more, and this page is the honest record of what it did.
What the work actually looked like
Dogs came off the streets around Lake Chapala in Jalisco, mostly in poor shape. They were treated, vaccinated, spayed or neutered, and fostered until they were well enough to travel. Then they flew north, usually to Portland, Seattle, Austin, Vancouver, or Montreal, to families who had already been matched and approved before the dog ever got on a plane.
That last part mattered more than anything else. A dog was never shipped north hoping a home would turn up. The home came first.
Why it stopped
Rescue at that scale runs on a small number of people doing an enormous amount of unglamorous work, and it does not survive those people running out of road. Bone Voyage wound down its rescue operations in 2024 and gave up its 501(c)(3) status. There are no dogs to adopt here, no fostering program, no volunteer roster, and no donations being taken. If you have landed on an older page that suggests otherwise, that page is out of date and we are still finding them.
If you want to adopt, Petfinder and your local shelter are the right places to start, and our breeds and adoption guides can help you think through what kind of dog actually fits your life.
What continues
The part of this work that never had a good answer was what happens to a dog when the person who loves it can no longer care for it. Owners get sick. They move into care. They die. The dog, often a senior itself, ends up in a shelter at the worst possible moment, and senior dogs wait longest and are placed least often.
So the mission now is narrower and, we think, more useful: make sure a dog has somewhere to go before the crisis, not after. That is what a backup adopter is, and it is what A Home for Life explains.
The rest of this site is the practical material that goes with it. There is senior dog care and longevity, a behavior and training section, and guidance on living well with a senior dog.
The research
In 2023 we surveyed 3,000 Americans about whether they would adopt from a shelter or buy from a breeder, and published the answer for every state. Rise of the Underdog is still online and still free to cite. Journalists can find the full citation list on our press and research page.