The Wagsies 2026 - The Association for Animal Welfare Advancement

The Association & Hill’s Pet Nutrition welcome you to The Wagsies, an awards platform developed to honor outstanding marketing efforts delivered through videos celebrating connection, highlighting solutions, and inspiring audiences to take action to help pets in need.

Win your slice of the $40,000 pie!

Producing an impactful video takes strategy, skill, and just plain genius. Pair that talent with stories of hope, healing, and the incredible people and animals behind it all, and you just might have a winner on your hands.

How to enter

Confirm your best storytelling-video fits within the contest guidelines and follows the official contest rules.
Choose the appropriate category for your organization.
- Annual operating budget less than $2MM
- Annual operating budget more than $2MM
Fill out the entry form.
Upload your video.
Submit your entry.

Enter June 18 through July 2, 2026

Join us at The Annual Conference in Chattanooga to see The Wagsies winners announced live: October 27, 2026!

Prizes

10 Finalists

A panel of judges will score each video. The five highest scored entries for each category will be deemed category finalists.

Each winner will receive $1,000.

Professional Choice Award

Awarded by animal welfare marketing experts, The Professional Choice Award will be granted to the entries with the highest score in each category.

Each winner will receive a trophy and $5,000.

People’s Choice Awards

Awarded by the voting general public, The People's Choice Award will be granted to the entries with the most votes in each category.

Each winner will receive a trophy and $10,000.

Guidelines

The Association welcomes members to participate, as well as any shelter, spay/neuter clinic, municipal animal care and control, or rescue organization operating in the U.S./D.C. & Canada (excluding Quebec).
Each organization can submit one video.
Submissions can be a maximum of two minutes (120 seconds) in length.
Videos must have been created between July of 2025 and July of 2026.
Videos previously submitted for any contest are not eligible for submission.
All submissions must be in .mov or .mp4 format.
All submissions must be in English.
All submissions must be at least 720 x 480 pixels.
All submissions and have a file size of less than 1GB.

NO PURCHASE NECESSARY. Open to animal shelters, welfare and humane organizations that operate in the U.S./D.C. & Canada (excluding Quebec) that are represented by a legal resident of the U.S./D.C. or Canada (excluding Quebec) who is the age of majority in their state/jurisdiction/province of residence or older as of date of entry. Void outside the U.S./D.C./CAN, in Quebec and where prohibited. The Association's Wagsies Video Awards sponsored by Hill’s Pet Nutrition begins at 12:00 a.m. ET on 6/18/26 & ends at 11:59 P.M. ET on 7/2/26. 2 Grand Prizes available (1 per category) to be won valued at USD$10,150 each. 10 Finalist Prizes available (5 per category) to be won valued at USD$1,000 each. 2 Professional’s Choice Prizes available (1 per category) to be won valued at USD$5,150 each. Sponsored by Hills Pet Nutrition, Inc.

See complete rules