Cutest dog, cat in Wichita, KS: How Voting Works & How to Win

A newspaper pets ballot, not a business awards programme

Most public vote programmes covered on this site are readers choice contests where local businesses compete across dozens of categories. This one is built differently. Cutest dog, cat in Wichita, KS is a single lighthearted question that The Wichita Eagle puts to its readers through the pets section of its own site, Kansas.com. The 2025 ballot asked a plain question, could one of twelve dogs be the cutest in Wichita, and invited readers to vote for a favorite. There is no roster of business categories, no nomination round and no sponsor ladder, just one pets question aimed at the paper's Wichita, Kansas audience.

The organizer matters here. The Wichita Eagle is the daily newspaper for Wichita, and Kansas.com is its web home, so the ballot lives inside the publisher's own living and pets coverage instead of sitting on an outside contest platform. That placement shapes the experience, because a supporter arrives through ordinary pets journalism, adoption stories and animal features, and encounters the vote as part of the section. The table gathers the stable details in one place.

What the calendar shows and what it does not

Two rounds of this pets ballot are documented, in 2024 and 2025, and that pair of years is the basis for calling the programme annual. The 2025 window ran through October, with the ballot page carrying an update stamp of October 23, 2025 at 2:39 PM, which shows the vote was still live late in the month. The recurrence evidence points to a next expected round in 2026, though the publisher has not announced one ahead of time.

The gaps are as real as the dates. Only the month is established for the window, because The Wichita Eagle has never printed the precise first and last day, so those should be confirmed on the live ballot each cycle. The publisher has also left out a per supporter limit, any daily voting rule and every eligibility term for this pets programme, and no platform round dates exist for it either, since the vote is carried on Kansas.com itself rather than on a contest platform with published phases. Anyone planning a serious support push should read the live module during the window rather than relying on assumptions carried over from other ballots.

How a supporter votes on the Kansas.com ballot

Voting here asks little of a supporter. Open the pets section of Kansas.com, find the cutest dog ballot among the publisher's pets stories, and pick from the twelve dogs presented. The 2025 page framed the choice as one question, which of these twelve could be the cutest dog in Wichita, and each entry carried its own short description, the kind of affectionate write up the publisher's pets coverage is known for. Submitting a pick costs nothing and is open to any reader.

The return rule is the one thing the page leaves open. Because The Wichita Eagle has never printed a cap on repeat voting for this ballot, anyone hoping to vote several times during the October window should follow whatever the live module states at the moment of voting. The same applies to accounts, the vote is carried on Kansas.com itself, and any sign in requirement would present itself on the page when a vote is submitted. In practice the sequence is brief, open the pets section, read the twelve entries, cast the pick, and check the module's own terms before planning a return visit. Nothing about the format requires payment, registration ahead of time or any step beyond the on page vote itself.

Where this ballot sits among the Kansas programmes

The nearest neighbour is Best of Wichita, which shares The Wichita Eagle as its publisher and the same Kansas.com home. The two are not the same programme. Best of Wichita is a readers choice contest for local businesses, while the cutest dog ballot is a single pets question with twelve animal entries. Backing one of the two does not count toward the other, and the rules of one say nothing about the other.

Beyond Wichita, the Kansas slate includes Best of Johnson County, Best of Lawrence and Best of KC (Kansas City Magazine), all readers choice programmes in other markets, plus CommunityVotes Overland Park, which runs on a different platform entirely, and Catchy Awards Kansas High School Athletics, a sports programme. What sets the cutest dog ballot apart from every one of them is scope, it is the only pets vertical entry, it is the only one hosted directly on a newspaper's own site in this group, and it asks about animals rather than businesses or athletes. For a Wichita reader, that makes it the lightest of the local ballots, a quick seasonal vote rather than a weeks long category competition.

Strengthening support for a Wichita pets entry

Winning support for a Wichita pets entry is a reach problem. The pool of voters is the Wichita audience that already reads The Wichita Eagle's pets coverage, so the effective move is to put the entry in front of local animal lovers, through the owner's own social channels, neighbourhood groups and anyone who follows the paper's adoption stories. The 2025 window gave the whole month of October, which means a steady drumbeat of reminders across the window beats a single push. Because the publisher has never printed a cap on repeat voting, ask supporters to read the live module's own terms before returning. A fuller playbook for public newspaper votes of this shape sits in the guide on earning more votes, and for the rules question around outside help, the legality page covers the general position.