Our Story

After opening in 2003 as a foster based Cocker Spaniel Rescue, a few years ago we started thinking about how to keep the rescue going if I or any of our key people could not do the job any more. Keeping the rescue going for many many years is very important to us. We started building and creating a board of directors that could take over. We also decided that if we had a facility then we would have the most chance to keep going with the work we love to do.

We spent a lot of time researching areas before we decided on Tuolumne County and finding the perfect spot in Jamestown.  Twenty one beautiful acres for sale. We had $50,000, enough for a down payment but our amazing supporters Jerry and Cybel Maio donated the rest so we were able to purchase the land outright. We decided on an old fashioned gold mining town theme to go with the area.

When it came time to start building our lucky star came through again with another amazing donation from Timothy and Connie Wagner, enough to build the kennels all at once so we didn’t have to wait until the donations come in to start. We named the Sanctuary Arlo’s Second Chance Sanctuary in honor of Arlo, the Wagner’s beloved Cocker Spaniel adopted from you guessed it, Second Chance.

We posted a timeline of the building process on facebook. We are still in the building process and hope this story will have a happy ending very soon.