Closed Thanksgiving Day: Thursday, November 28

Dogs & Puppies

Thank you for choosing Animal Welfare Society as a place to adopt a pet! 

Home | Adopt a Pet | Dogs & Puppies

We regularly have adolescent and adult dogs for adoption. When we have puppies for adoption, you can find them on this page. Remember that puppies tend to be adopted very quickly, so if you do not see any, please check back again soon.

We look forward to helping to match you with your new best friend and supporting you throughout the adoption process. Adopters are welcome to visit our Adoption Center without a scheduled appointment to meet and adopt pets including dogs, cats, birds and small animals. We are open 7 days a week, from 10 am – 3:30 pm.

All adoptions are on a first come, first served basis. These adoption pages are REAL TIME, so as soon as a dog or puppy is adopted, it will “disappear” from the website.

To adopt, stop by the Adoption Center anytime during our open hours 10 am – 3:30 pm, seven days a week. If the pet is listed as being in foster care, please call first.

Questions about adopting a dog or puppy?

For more information, please contact our Adoption Center via email or telephone at (207) 985-3244.

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@aws.maine

As reported this week, AWS is caring for a number of shih tzus taken in by state's Animal Welfare Program last month. We are pleased to announce that the dogs are receiving much needed veterinary care at our Community Veterinary Clinic and many will ready for adoption very soon. In the meantime, our amazing foster families have opened up their homes to these dogs, showing them love and compassion, teaching them basic skills on how to be a family pet, and giving them a home-like setting liked they've never experienced.

We have received a lot of inquiries into the shih tzus. We are grateful for the interest, and thank you for your support and well wishes. We ask for patience as we get the dogs ready for the next chapter of their lives. Some have significant medical hurdles to overcome and others simply need a little more time to decompress in their foster homes before they are ready to be adopted. All adoptable pets are posted on our website as soon as they become available. Therefore, we encourage those interested in adopting one of the shih tzus to keep an eye on our website ➡➡ https://animalwelfaresociety.org/adoption/dogs/

As with all our adoptable pets, when you see a dog online that you’d like to meet/adopt, please follow the instructions on how to adopt from AWS. All adoptions at AWS are first come, first served, so we will not be taking a list of names or offer "pre-applications" for any of the shih tzus. ➡➡ https://animalwelfaresociety.org/adoption/how-to-adopt/ 

Our Adoption Center is open daily (closed Thanksgiving Day) from 10 am - 3:30 pm and we are located in Kennebunk, Maine. Thank you for helping us, and our fellow Maine shelters, support the state of Maine's Animal Welfare Program when they needed us most. We know these shih tzus have a wonderful future ahead of them!
For Animal Shelter Appreciation Week we encouraged you to share your Happy Homes stories with us, and you delivered! We wanted to share some of your stories that stood out to us.

Sesame now Chance:
“I adopted Chance in July of 2022. I should say he chose me. He has such a funny personality-he is quite vocal at 5am. Really he is adorable and a complete joy.”

Read Happy Homes and to share your story at the link in our bio.
Don’t forget! Animal Welfare Society has been selected to be part of the Kennebunk @hannafordmkts' Bloomin' 4 Good fundraiser. AWS will receive a $1 donation from the purchase of each specially marked bouquets (look for the red circle sticker). Pick up a bouquet for your Thanksgiving table and to help the animals at the same time!
(This is at Kennebunk Hannaford store location only)