Behind Our Name

We were inspired by our founders heritage and our vision for a utopia.

Arcadia is a mountainous region of ancient Greece, traditionally represented in literature as a place of pastoral innocence and contentment...an imaginary, or real, place that offers peace, simplicity...harmoniously inhabited by all of God's creatures. That's our vision.

Our Small Team of Volunteers

We are a small team of volunteers (unpaid) who dedicate our lives to saving the innocents who are losing theirs for no reason other than the irresponsibility and apathy of humans. 

Collectively, our team has been saving animals from death row and ones that are dumped or abandoned in the community for two decades. Over that time we have saved and placed approximately 10,000 animals.

Our Mission and Values 

We are the ones that have approximately 200 or more animals on our roster at any given time. This is more than most shelters can accommodate - and we don’t have a facility. We financially support all these animals in their foster homes or boarding facilities with everything from vetting, supplies, training, cost of boarding, etc.

We are the ones that take in the animals that other rescues and shelters say no to - the medical cases, the ones with behavioral challenges, the pregnant moms, and ones with babies. Where many other rescues will happily take puppies, we are the rescue that either takes the whole family or takes the throw-away mom that’s been left behind after another ”rescue” took only the puppies.

We are a rescue that has never - and will never - send an animal back to a shelter, even when it turns out to be one with issues. Once we make a commitment to an animal, we will see it through to the end, no matter how long and/or what it takes to provide every opportunity for that animal to thrive, succeed, and become an adoptable family pet.

We are the rescue that the shelters call for help at 6 PM at night when the needle of euthanasia is prepped and the animal is on the table, terrified and waiting to die. They call us when everyone else has said no because they know we WILL find a way.

We are the Rescue that actually responds to all the calls, emails and social media pleas for help from owners that need to surrender their dogs due to evictions, divorces, illnesses, emergencies or deaths in the family, and other reasons (and we are repeatedly told we were the only ones that even bothered to respond, let alone try to help). We believe Rescue isn’t just about saving them from the shelters, but also keeping them out of the shelters in the first place.

We are the ones that respond to the emergencies in the middle of the night, on weekends and holidays, etc. Often we have to get in our car and go, sometimes driving hours, any time day or night, to go get the pet that somebody is threatening to either dump in the local shelter or take out back and shoot it because it peed on their couch, chewed up their new pair of shoes, doesn’t like the other pets in the home, or looked at them the wrong way.

We are the ones who are not only unpaid, but actually end up paying out of our own pockets - even selling off personal possessions and racking up credit card debt - when donations are few and adoptions fees don’t come close to recouping what it actually costs to save each life. And, the medical, boarding, and transport bills keep piling up while we still find a way to say “yes” to saving the next life.

The Physical and Emotional Toll

We sacrifice relationships, income, friendships, time with our family, miss out on holiday gatherings, special family events, milestones, and occasions to fulfill this calling…all of the things most people take for granted as part of “normal” daily life.

We have no days off — EVER. Rescue is 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. No sick days, no PTO. Weekends, holidays, vacations don’t apply to us…we still have to coordinate fosters, transports, deal with emergencies, all while still caring for the animals foster/boarding in our own homes. We battle constant physical exhaustion and mental/compassion fatigue but must carry on because lives are depending on us. Some of us do all this while balancing full-time jobs and young grandchildren in the home. Many days, simple things like taking a shower or getting to the grocery store are a luxury that there is no time for.

We are the ones enduring criticism from people who never have run a rescue nor have a clue what it takes to do so. We are often questioned by fosters/adopters why there are adoption fees involved, criticism from the online stratosphere on why we make the decisions we do, who we can and can’t save, etc. We carry the immense burden of doing everything we possibly can, and it’s still never enough.

We are the ones bearing the tremendous emotional toll that the average member of the public never sees - the immense guilt and sorrow, crying over the ones we were working on but couldn’t save from euthanasia in time…and those faces stay with us forever. Not to mention seeing the cruelty, neglect, and suffering inflicted upon them by the worst of humanity on a daily basis. We are the ones who carry the weight of a broken system—one we did not create, but refuse to ignore and turn our backs on.

The Bottom Line

We are the sad ASCPA commercial that you see on TV, but *without* the celebrities or the CEO making a million dollars, or any municipal/government funding whatsoever. And still, we are on the front lines every day - the boots on the ground, in the trenches, saving the lives of the innocent, whether there’s funds to do so or not.

For us, this is a CALLING - we serve the animals and we answer to God. We are the ones who break our own hearts over and over again… because their lives matter more. We are what REAL rescue is.