Keep Families Together

Dear Friends,

Imagine being forced to choose between a safe shelter for you and your kids or keeping your pets. It’s an impossible choice. And it’s one no family should ever have to face.

You might be surprised to learn that some of the animals we care for at Animal Welfare Society have loving homes. Their families just hit a crisis they couldn’t see coming.

That’s what happened to Emily.*

One night she woke up to blaring smoke detectors and had to evacuate her children and pets in the middle of winter. Thankfully, the fire did not destroy their apartment, but their landlord said it would be three weeks before it would be habitable again. Where could they go?

Emily and her kids spent the first two weeks in a modest hotel that fortunately accepted pets. However, as a single mother with a tight budget, they soon found themselves living out of their minivan.

At the three-week mark, the landlord reached out to say the renovations were taking longer than expected, and it might be another month. Emily knew her family could not stay in the car that long. Everyone was both physically and mentally exhausted, including her dog, Moxie, and cat, Felix. 

The next step was finding suitable shelter. Emily was so relieved to discover she and her children were eligible to stay in her town’s family shelter… but then reality hit: her pets were not.

That’s when she called us.

Because of AWS, Emily didn’t have to make that impossible choice. We took in Moxie and Felix right away for emergency sheltering. Emily and her children checked into the shelter. And for the first time in weeks, she could finally exhale.

Six weeks later, Emily and her kids walked through the door of their newly renovated apartment. Moxie and Felix were waiting. The moment her children dropped to their knees to hug their animals, Emily started to cry. Not from sadness, but from relief.

That moment is why we do this work. And we can’t do it without you.

Your gift today means the next family in crisis won’t have to choose between their children’s wellbeing and their pets. It means they can hold it all together, even when everything feels like it’s falling apart.

Thank you for helping us keep families together.

With gratitude,

Heidi Marston
Executive Director
heidi@animalwelfaresociety.org

*Names and details have been changed to protect our client’s privacy.

P.S. Woofstock is just around the corner on July 25! We hope to see you at Southern Maine’s biggest family- and dog-friendly event of the year. And if you have leftover foreign coins or bills collecting dust from past travels, bring them along. We’ll convert them into donations that go straight to helping families like Emily’s.