Tally Top Pet Photo Contest: How Voting Works & How to Win

What the Tally Top Pet Photo Contest is and who runs it

The Tally Top Pet Photo Contest is a pet photo competition run by Tallahassee Magazine, the publication behind tallahasseemagazine.com, for a Tallahassee, Florida audience. The ballot sits on the magazine's own site, on a page titled Tally Top Pet Presents Proceeds to Be The Solution, which is also where the programme reports its fundraising results.

Two facts set this programme apart from other Florida pet ballots. It carries a named sponsor, North Florida Animal Hospital, and it is built around a charity outcome: Tallahassee Magazine reported that community participation garnered over $15,000 for Be The Solution's mission. The vertical is pets, so the nominees are photographs of readers' animals rather than businesses or people.

Because the magazine presents the vote itself, the contest page and the rules page on the same domain are the two places a supporter should read before taking part. Everything dated on this page comes from those organizer pages.

The dated record of the Tally Top Pet contest

Confirmed editions of the Tally Top Pet Photo Contest ran in 2019, 2024, 2025 and 2026. The first of these opened to submissions on Nov. 1, 2019, when residents could begin entering their pets and casting votes. Tallahassee Magazine's own write-up calls the programme a yearly contest, which is why the 2024 through 2026 run reads as a revival of the 2019 edition rather than a new programme.

The 2025 edition carries a full printed schedule. Entry opened January 7, 2025 and closed January 31, 2025, with a $10 entry fee plus $1 per additional vote. Voting then ran in elimination windows: the Top 16 to Elite 8 round from March 18-23, 2025, the Elite 8 to Final Fur round from March 25-30, 2025, Final Fur online voting from April 1-6, 2025 which decided the top 4, and final two voting from April 8-14, 2025, which decided the Tally Top Pet.

Tallahassee Magazine has not published a cap on votes per supporter, an eligibility rule or the round dates for the 2026 edition on the contest page; confirm on the live ballot each cycle.

How a supporter votes in the Tally Top Pet contest

Voting happens on Tallahassee Magazine's own website, not on a third-party balloting platform. A supporter opens the Tally Top Pet Presents Proceeds to Be The Solution page during an open round, chooses a pet photo and casts a public vote. Pet owners take a different path: during the entry phase they submit a photo and pay the fee the rules page sets, which in 2025 meant $10 to enter plus $1 per additional vote.

The bracket structure is the part supporters most often miss. A vote cast in the Top 16 round does not carry forward on its own; the field shrinks to the Elite 8, then to the Final Fur, and only two contestants reach the last window. In 2025 that meant a pet needed support across four separate stretches of late March and early April, ending with the April 8-14 final two vote.

The magazine publishes each cycle's entry dates and round dates on its rules page, so the 2025 schedule above is the pattern to expect rather than a promise. If you arrive between rounds, the contest page will show which stage is live and which pets are still in the running.

How this ballot sits beside other Florida pet and readers-choice contests

Tallahassee Magazine's pet contest is one of several Florida programmes of this shape, and the differences are worth knowing before you treat their rules as interchangeable. The Animal Welfare League of Charlotte County Best in Show Photo Contest is run by an animal welfare league rather than a magazine, and the Dachshund Rescue South Florida Calendar Contest feeds a calendar, so its prize structure differs from a bracket that crowns a single Tally Top Pet.

Among magazine-run programmes, SRQ Magazine Pets We Love Fan Favorites is the closest cousin in format, though it serves a different Florida market from Tallahassee. The readers-choice polls are broader still: the Best of Florida Awards, the Best of Miami Readers' Poll and Best of Orlando cover whole markets and many categories at once, where the Tally Top Pet is a single-subject pet ballot for Tallahassee.

What makes this one distinct is the combination of a magazine host, a named veterinary sponsor and a charity beneficiary, plus elimination rounds that most of the others do not use.

Strengthening support for a Tally Top Pet entry

The bracket is the fact that should shape any push for a Tally Top Pet photo. Because Tallahassee Magazine eliminates pets round by round, from the Top 16 through the Elite 8 and the Final Fur, a photo needs its supporters to come back several times across late March and early April rather than vote once. Reminders timed to each round's opening do more work than a single burst.

The organizer's own rules page is also the authority on paid support: the 2025 rules themselves offered a $1 per additional vote option beside the $10 entry fee, so the magazine already sells a way to add votes inside its own ballot. What the rules say about outside software or bulk voting is printed there, and that page governs.

For general tactics that work regardless of this ballot's rules, see how to get more votes online, and for the legal position on paid votes in public contests, read whether buying votes is legal. A community vote like this one has no guaranteed outcome for any purchase.