Clark's Pets Calendar Contest: How Voting Works & How to Win

One confirmed edition, not a decade of past winners

Clark's Pets Calendar Contest has exactly one confirmed edition: 2026. That single fact should shape how a pet owner or a business weighs entering, since there is no settled history here of past category lists, past vote caps, or a fixed annual schedule to point back to the way an older program might have.

Clark's Pet Emporium, a pet-supply retailer with a physical store in Albuquerque, organizes the contest at clarkspets.com/pet-calendar-contest. Pet owners submit a photo of a cat, dog or other companion for a chance at a spot in the store's calendar. Entries closed September 30, 2026, and the confirmed public voting window runs October 1 through October 15, 2026.

This is the first confirmed edition; whether it returns next year is not yet published; confirm on the live ballot each cycle. Treat any claim about a longer running history as unproven until Clark's Pet Emporium itself publishes a second confirmed year.

A single retailer's own contest, not a citywide readers'-choice ballot

Clark's Pets Calendar Contest belongs entirely to Clark's Pet Emporium, judged on entries submitted directly to that one store's own page. It carries no relationship to Albuquerque's larger readers'-choice ballots, which are run by separate publishers across many unrelated business categories.

None of those four other programs shares a judging panel, a results page or an entry form with Clark's Pets Calendar Contest, so a pet owner already active on one of them gains nothing automatically toward this one. A photo submitted here answers only to Clark's Pet Emporium's own process.

Albuquerque, New Mexico, and where this contest actually lives

Clark's Pet Emporium's storefront sits on Lomas Boulevard in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and its calendar contest is organized out of that same address. A pet owner anywhere the store already serves, not only inside Albuquerque's own city limits, is the realistic audience this photo contest was built for.

The confirmed page draws no entrant boundary at the county line specifically, and Clark's Pet Emporium's own page does not spell out whether entries are restricted to local pet owners at all. A pet owner elsewhere in New Mexico weighing whether to submit a photo has no confirmed answer here either way; confirm on the live ballot each cycle for whatever the current entry rules actually say.

A pet-supply retailer running a calendar contest out of a single storefront is a different shape entirely from a citywide readers'-choice ballot or a statewide awards program. Its reach is tied to the customers who already shop at that Albuquerque location and to whoever a supporter chooses to share the confirmed voting link with directly, rather than to a fixed geographic territory spelled out anywhere on the page itself.

Supporting a first-edition photo contest without assuming an established pattern

Because 2026 is the only confirmed edition, a supporter cannot lean on years of past behavior the way an older calendar contest might allow. The safer approach is treating the confirmed October 1-15 window as the whole picture: ask real friends, family and fellow pet owners to view the gallery and cast a vote for a specific photo during that stretch, rather than assuming a rule, a category, or a vote limit that has not actually been published.

A small retailer running its first confirmed calendar contest is also the kind of program where irregular voting activity stands out quickly, since there is no long history of past traffic patterns for it to hide inside. Sticking to genuine supporters, asked more than once inside the confirmed window, protects a photo's standing without relying on an assumption about rules Clark's Pet Emporium has not printed.

Winning a spot in the calendar is a decision Clark's Pet Emporium alone makes once its own voting window closes. Buying votes online explains what outside support commonly involves for a photo-contest format like this one, and is buying votes legal is worth reading before committing real budget to a program only one edition into its own history.