News-Press NOW Smarty-Pets Photo Contest: How Voting Works & How to Win

What is the News-Press NOW Smarty-Pets Photo Contest?

The Smarty-Pets Photo Contest is a pet photo vote run by News-Press NOW, a news organization that uses the Second Street platform for its reader promotions. The contest page sits on newspressnow.secondstreetapp.com, and its title in the listing reads Smarty-Pets Photo Contest 2025. Second Street classifies it as a photo voting promotion, which means readers look at submitted pictures and vote for favorites.

The page does not print a category list, a prize list or a rule set in the text on file, so the contest is described here only by what the listing states: organizer, platform, type and dates. The same Second Street account hosts other News-Press NOW promotions, including sweepstakes and a quiz, but those are separate programs and are not part of this guide.

No city is named for the contest, so the market is described as Missouri readers of News-Press NOW. The name of the program tells a reader what to expect: Smarty-Pets is the brand of the promotion, and the word photo in the title marks it as a picture contest, not a written nomination. The platform listing shows the organizer's Second Street account carrying a run of other promotions in 2026, such as sweepstakes and a history quiz, so a reader who lands on the account page may see several contests at once. The Smarty-Pets entry is the one that concerns pets, and its title with the year at the end is how it is told apart from the rest. A reader who wants to confirm that they are on the right page should check that the heading names the Smarty-Pets Photo Contest, since the account page lists many promotions side by side.

Which editions are confirmed and when does the contest run?

Editions in 2024 and 2025 are confirmed. The 2025 edition has an exact window on the platform: from September 1 to October 11, 2025, about six weeks in early autumn. The listing marks that window as closed, so the 2025 ballot cannot be voted in now.

The pattern across two confirmed years points to an autumn contest, but the dates of the 2024 window are not on file, and a later cycle has not been announced. The contest address posted for the program is the 2025 page, so a reader looking for a newer ballot should open the News-Press NOW Second Street page and look for a Smarty-Pets listing with a later year in its title. The date of the next window is a gap, so confirm on the live ballot each cycle.

Readers planning to enter a pet should treat the early autumn as the time to watch. A window that starts on the first of September gives owners a natural moment to take a fresh photograph at the end of summer, and a window that closes in the second week of October leaves little time for a late start. Owners who already have a favourite picture can keep it ready and check the News-Press NOW account in late August. The 2025 address is still useful as a model of how a listing is titled, because a later year in the same title pattern is the likeliest sign that a new cycle has opened.

How does a reader vote in the Smarty-Pets contest?

A reader opens the contest page, browses the pet photographs and chooses one to support. Because the promotion is a photo vote on Second Street, the action is a click on a picture and not a written nomination. The listing does not state whether an email address, a social login or a form is required, nor how often a person may vote.

Those details are the organizer's to publish. A voter should not assume that a limit from another Second Street contest applies here, and an entrant should avoid promising friends a particular number of votes per day. The contest was open for roughly six weeks in 2025, which gives supporters time to spread the word without a last-day rush.

• Open the Smarty-Pets Photo Contest on News-Press NOW's Second Street page.
• Browse the pet photographs in the gallery.
• Choose a pet and submit the vote.
• Read the page again before voting a second time.

Pet owners should send friends a direct link to their pet's entry whenever the page offers one. A friend who has to search a long account page for one pet is more likely to give up than one who lands on the right picture. Short messages that name the contest, name the organizer and say when the window closes are easy to forward, and they let a supporter confirm that the link belongs to the News-Press NOW contest and not to a look-alike page. If the page shows a share button, using it is simpler than copying an address by hand.

How does this contest sit beside other Missouri ballots?

Missouri's other ballots on this site include newspaper pet contests and city best-of polls. The Smarty-Pets contest is a pet photo vote on a promotion platform, while the larger regional polls ask readers to name favourite businesses. Two of the neighbours, the 2025 Cutest Pet Contest and the Joplin Globe Cutest Pet Contest, are also about animals, so a pet owner in Missouri may enter more than one of them in the same season. The differences are the organizer and the window: each runs under its own publisher, and nothing links their results. The magazine and newspaper ballots in the list are about businesses and community favourites, which is a different audience from a pet owner looking for votes on a photograph.

For the state overview, see the Missouri directory.

How can pet owners build support in the Smarty-Pets contest?

For a pet owner, the sound approach is to share the entry with people who know the animal: family, neighbours and local pet groups. A short message with the link and the closing date works better than repeated reminders.

Two practical habits help. First, ask supporters to vote early in the window, because a photo contest that runs for weeks rewards steady attention more than a single push. Second, keep the message about the pet and not about the vote count, since readers respond to a story more readily than to a request for numbers. News-Press NOW has not published a position on outside vote services, so the careful course is to rely on real supporters. The buy contest votes page explains how such services are described, and it should be read beside the contest's own rules.