Helen Woodward Animal Center Rancho Santa Fe, California

My dog, Abby, seemed very happy with her over night stay; it was her first time ever being boarded in her 10 years since I rescued her from Helen Woodward. I look forward to her two night stay next week, I think she is too!

What started as an exciting and hopeful trip to meet and adopt a new member to our household, we were met by a very rude and demeaning staff member. We had put down to see 4 dogs we were interested in meeting, and the older lady at the counter, (who definitely has a complex) decided to cross them off our list because of details regarding our fence. She then added that she would like us to give her permission to a home inspection, which we kindly declined, that we then became ridiculed for. This woman left us completely disappointed and upset that we had gotten our hopes up. We will not be returning to this facility.

Love how happy these animals are!

Got my cat here and all documents were done within the same day

Little cute puppies and dogs

We got the puppy from help she ruion my life she bite people and eat our walk and rip up our floor and carpet. She a very bad dog .

Anyone who didn't give this place 5 stars has issues.. I love Hellen Woodward. We need more places like this on Earth.

Clean and well kept. The cats were really cute. The dogs seemed unhappy

Very good experience and all the staff was so helpful. Thank you for helping us find and adopting our new family member

We adopted a sweetheart today. So happy to have a new addition to our family. Thank you to everyone at Helen Woodward.

The staff members and volunteers are amazing. Dr. Rodrigo Vazquez is one of the most kind, caring, ethical veterinarians ever. Superb! ❤️????❤️

Everyone is super friendly. Asking lots of questions. Many adopters today, so it was very busy there

What a wonderful facility! The staff was very knowledgeable and helpful throughout the whole adoption process. They even supplied us with a gift bag of goodies and a free first vet visit. Plus, our puppy was already chipped and spayed when we got him. Anyone is welcome to go look at the animals up for adoption however the staff does want to know that you're serious about adoption before they will allow meet-and-greets. Would highly recommend and if we were to ever adopt another pet we would 100% come back here. So glad we found them! FYI, the map took us to their main office which is around the corner from the shelter location which is across from the Rancho Sante Fe Fire Station on El Apajo. They are open daily for walk-ins! (Had to add some pics of our new cutie ????)

Great nonprofit. Donate to support services. Programs education for kids year-round . Shelter. And special needs programs. Great resource

My experience at Helen Woodward was not very pleasant. I came in on September 25th, filled out an application, and mentioned that I would be back the following day (the 26th) in order to adopt. When I returned that following day, they told me that they had lost my application, and that I would not be able to adopt (same day) because of that very reason. I had to fill out another- which was not a big deal. However, after filling it out, I was met by a very rude and judgmental staff member. I felt extremely unwelcome, and it seemed as if Helen Woodward took the excitement out of the entire experience. Feeling defeated, yet still ready to adopt, I decided to check out the Rancho Coastal Humane Society (just 10 minutes down the road). The experience that I had there was fantastic, and now I am sitting at home with a new, happy, and healthy kitty on my chest. I would never recommend Helen Woodward to anybody. If you’re thinking of adopting from HW, I advise you to check out the Rancho Coastal Humane Society first, instead.

If I could give 0 stars I would. My fiancé and I adopted our sweet puppy from here about 3 weeks ago. According to her paper work she had received deworming medication from the shelter. We started to notice that something wasn't quite right with her bowel movements and luckily we had already had our first vet apt scheduled. When we took her in they told she had worms and she had tested positive for Giardia. I don't understand how our pup could have worms if she had just received a worm treatment not even a month ago? This shelter clearly does not care about what is best for the animals as much as they do trying to upkeep some high end facility for show. I would not recommend this place to anyone sadly.

We got are dog herbert 3 years ago love him so much

Came to this shelter in hopes of adopting an older dog or cat for their golden years. 90% of their animals were very young, most being under 2 months old with no mothers present. They also refused to let me interact with the dogs or cats until I began the adoption process on one of the animals. Not to mention the absurd pricing on most of their animals ($500+ fees for young animals) and even the 6 dogs and 2 cats over 2 years old were over $300. This place is not a shelter, it is a glorified pet store.

My husband and I adopted our sweet dog from here. I don’t write reviews on anything but I felt like this should be told. On our dogs medical report it said he was dewormed by two different mg worming medication and a day or two after we noticed his stool was a bit weird but thought it was his stomach adjusting to his food. As another day goes by we were laying down and I noticed something around his back end and it was a worm… So he has worms but on his medical report it said he was dewormed. From the time we got him he shouldn’t have even had worms or been able to get worms if he was medicated.

We feel they are very trustworthy with out pets and they show true concern for the health & wellness of your pets... they are always amazing with our girls..

Helen Woodward Animal Center is amazing!! They're allowing walk-in visits again. The staff is friendly and helpful. Adoption process is pretty simple.

This shelter has so many beautiful dogs and cats, all very well taken care of and ready for their forever families. Would highly recommend to anyone who needs a new best friend. Adopt don't shop! Save a life!

Helen Woodward is where I got my puppy, and I couldn’t of been more thrilled with the experience. The volunteers are very helpful as well as kind and the diversity within the dogs is astonishing. Although occasionally they will not label the dogs certain bully breeds, I was super happy with my little puppy pitbull!!

So incredibly helpful. Woodward is puppy central ????

Clean big 0lace with well cares for animals

Love the yearly Pawmicon activities. This year we got to go to the actual center and the facility is amazing and big. The animals are well cared for and every employee/volunteer was super nice and cheerful.

15 years ago what seemed like 20, our family adopted a cat- a mutt if you will- from this facility. It is still peppy as the day of purchase. We came here in hopes of getting another cat but turns out you have to be 18 (age of consent) to try out the cats. We were turned down and did not get our cat that day. We will be forced to look elsewhere.

The prices for the dogs were ridiculous!

I went to the shelter to go meet a puppy I had seen on the website. Got there and filled out the application then they wouldn’t even let me meet the puppy because not all the adults that lived in the home were there. They say puppies younger than 6 months can not be left alone for more than 4 hours which is just unrealistic for anyone that has a job. We got our current dog from them and did not have any issues with her being left alone longer than the 4 hours. They have unrealistic expectations of their adopters.

We adopted the perfect new member of our family “Sly” here. I would rate our new pup at 10 stars but the Helen Woodward animal center gets 3. The staff was curt and acted annoyed by my inquiries about the dogs in the facility. I have owned dogs before and knew exactly what i was looking for: size/breed/traits. I filled out their paper with the info and only found one dog from walking around i thought would be a good fit: Sly. After returning to the counter i was told he could not go home to a family with children, even though it was not listed on his description and we had the whole family there to meet him (which was the only requirement shown). Instead we were told to go find another dog. I asked how i should find another dog that fit my family when the needs of the dogs listed were not accurate. I was told the only way to know was to check a big binder but they wouldn’t check the binder for me. Instead they pointed me to a German shepherd or a lab mix neither of which were breeds we were interested in and had told them nothing over 40lbs. So they said we could get a puppy, brand new puppy and i said no we don’t want a brand new puppy, thank you we will just leave and look else where. And then they said oh wait maybe you can meet Sly, and so we met with him and he was perfect and wonderful and we were willing to adopt him but then we had to go through another interrogation about whether or not we could handle him. I don’t mind the thoroughness but the whole process was kind of demeaning. It wasn’t “hey let’s work together to find a good fit for your family” it was “don’t ask me questions about the dogs, just write down the names you want and we will tell you if you are good enough or not” The dog i picked out from the beginning was exactly what we needed/wanted and I’m so thankful we ended up bringing him home. But i can’t in good faith recommend this shelter to others. We ended up with a great match because i ignored their rudeness and bossiness and held my ground about the type of dog we would and would not adopt. If we were an unassuming family that entered that day we would have been sent home with a hyper large breed heavy shedding untrained puppy that would not have worked for us at all. I believe the purpose of their system is to find good long term homes for dogs, but the way it plays out feels more like a puppy mill.