Great Plains SPCA Best In Show Pet Photo Contest: How Voting Works & How to Win

What the Best In Show Pet Photo Contest is and who runs it

Every fall, pet owners around Merriam face the same problem: their dog or cat is clearly the best animal they know, and there is finally a local ballot built to prove it. The Great Plains SPCA Best In Show Pet Photo Contest is a public-vote photo contest for pets, run by Great Plains SPCA, an animal welfare organization headquartered at 5424 Antioch Drive in Merriam, Kansas, reachable at (913) 831-7722. Unlike the readers-choice ballots that dominate the Kansas contest calendar, this one lives on the shelter's own website under the /bestinshow/ path, with no outside balloting platform in the middle.

The ballot's printed category names include Best Buddies, Best Smile and Sweetest Senior, though the page presents those as candidate phrases rather than a guaranteed complete roster. Sponsorship for the 2026 cycle is printed as The Quinn Foundation, Hill's Pet Nutrition and Black & Veatch. The contest doubles as a fundraiser: entering a pet costs $10 and each vote costs $1, so every ballot cast channels money toward the shelter's work in Merriam.

For a supporter, the practical consequence of the own-site hosting is simple: the entry form, the vote buttons and the category names all live in one place, and nothing about the Best In Show ballot depends on a platform account elsewhere.

The dated facts for Best In Show: editions, windows and what is not published

Two editions of the Best In Show Pet Photo Contest are confirmed from printed pages: 2023 and 2025. For the current cycle, Great Plains SPCA describes the event as the Sixth Annual Best In Show, presented by The Quinn Foundation, Hill's Pet Nutrition and Black & Veatch, and states that it is back for 2026. The entry window runs from August 1st to October 6th, and voting runs from September 21st to October 10th. The organizer's site also promotes its 5th Annual Signature Fundraising Finale at the shelter on October 16th at 6:00pm, tied to the contest season.

Not everything is printed. Great Plains SPCA publishes no per-supporter vote limit, no daily-vote ceiling and no eligibility terms anywhere on the Best In Show page; confirm on the live ballot each cycle. Whether the printed category names carry over unchanged between cycles is likewise not stated, and the organizer does not print a closing date for the 2026 cycle beyond the October 10th voting close already listed.

The shape of the printed history matters for anyone planning an entry. The 2023 and 2025 editions both followed the same late-summer entry and early-October voting pattern, and the 2026 announcement keeps that pattern, so the practical planning window for a pet owner opens on August 1st and effectively ends on October 10th, with the shelter's finale two days after the last vote is cast.

How a supporter votes in the Best In Show contest today

Great Plains SPCA's Best In Show mechanic is a straightforward public vote. A supporter visits the Best In Show page at greatplainsspca.org/bestinshow/, browses the entered pets, and casts a vote at $1 per vote during the September 21st to October 10th voting phase. Entering a pet costs $10 during the August 1st to October 6th entry window. Because the ballot sits on the shelter's own site, the vote a supporter casts goes straight to Great Plains SPCA as a small donation, not to a balloting vendor.

The Best In Show page prints no account requirement for voting, and it also prints no explicit confirmation that voting is open to supporters outside the Merriam area, so a distant animal lover should simply attempt a vote and see whether the form accepts it. An earlier cycle's page tied contestant photos to a printed Great Plains SPCA calendar, which is one reason the shelter's contest attracts photo-quality entries rather than casual snapshots.

For a pet owner, the practical sequence is: pick the strongest single photo, enter it during the August window, then spend the September voting phase driving that photo's link to people who will actually pay the $1 per vote. The contest rewards sustained sharing more than a single announcement, since voting stays open for the better part of three weeks.

Where the Best In Show ballot sits among Kansas public-vote programs

Kansas readers have no shortage of public-vote ballots, but almost none of them look like this one. The state's readers-choice field includes Best of Johnson County, Best of KC (Kansas City Magazine), Best of Lawrence and Best of Wichita, each a multi-category ballot where local businesses compete under dozens of headings. Catchy Awards Kansas High School Athletics covers school sports, and CommunityVotes Overland Park runs the nominate-then-vote model in a single Johnson County city.

The Best In Show Pet Photo Contest is different on three counts. Its vertical is pets, not businesses or athletes, so the nominees are animals rather than storefronts. Its host is the shelter's own website, where Great Plains SPCA keeps the entry form and the vote buttons under its own control. And its economics are printed openly: $10 to enter, $1 per vote, with the proceeds supporting the shelter's animal welfare work in Merriam.

That makes the audience different too. A Best of Johnson County voter is a consumer rating services they have used; a Best In Show voter is an animal person, often a past adopter or a donor, paying a dollar because a specific pet photo moved them. Anyone running both kinds of campaigns in Kansas should treat them as separate projects with separate audiences rather than one push split across ballots.

Rallying votes for your pet without guessing at the rules

Because every Best In Show vote costs $1, a supporter push for your pet is really a small fundraising campaign, and the tactics that work are the ones that respect that. Ask the people already attached to your animal, family, friends, coworkers, your veterinarian's front desk, your dog park group, and give them the direct link to your pet's entry on the Great Plains SPCA page. A personal ask with a photo beats a mass post, since each vote asks for a dollar, not just a click.

On outside help, the organizer publishes no stated position: the Best In Show page carries no rule about votes from third-party services, so nothing printed either permits or prohibits them. What is certain is the printed mechanic, a public vote at $1 per vote through October 10th, and any support strategy should be built around that visible mechanic rather than around rules nobody has written down. For broader tactics that fit a charity photo ballot like this one, see how to get more votes online, and for award-style contests generally, buy award votes explains the category.