Chautauqua County Humane Society Hot Dogs, Cool Cats Photo Contest: How Voting Works & How to Win

What the Hot Dogs, Cool Cats Photo Contest is and who publishes it

The Hot Dogs, Cool Cats Photo Contest is a pet photo fundraiser whose ballot carries the Chautauqua County Humane Society name. The voting account on the platform reads Chautauquacountyhumanesociety 2016, and the contest sits on GoGo Photo Contest, a dedicated photo-balloting platform whose pages carry a GGPC, LLC copyright line. The market is Jamestown, New York, the county seat of Chautauqua County in the state's southwest corner, and the audience is local pet owners plus everyone they can rally to vote.

The theme is poker. The 2016 ballot asked whether your pooch is the Ace of Spades, your kitty the Queen of Hearts, or perhaps your ferret the joker in the pack, and invited owners to ante up and show their fur babies' best poker face. That framing carried through to the prizes: the 2016 winner received the coveted title of CCHS 2016 Pet of the Year and their pet's name featured on one of the deck's court positions of their choice, with the printed decks built as full playing sets.

Structurally this is a single-cause fundraiser ballot, not a multi-business readers poll. One gallery of animal photos, one public vote, one title at stake. The table below gathers the essentials a supporter needs before planning anything around this program.

The dated history: which editions ran and when the window closed

Six editions of this fundraiser are confirmed: 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019. Each ran on GoGo Photo Contest under its own dated address, which is why the surviving ballot for the 2016 round sits at a URL ending in 2016. The 2019 round is the most recent edition with a confirmed ballot, and no round after it has a published date.

The one fully dated window belongs to the 2016 edition. Its ballot told supporters the contest would conclude on January 31 at 9:59:59 PM, with the clock running on Eastern Time, and it urged people to get their votes in before that moment. The same ballot set a minimum of five votes per each order, tying the fundraising mechanics directly to the vote count. Today that 2016 page reads Contest has ended, which is the platform's standard state for a closed round rather than a sign the program folded.

What the published history does not carry is a forward calendar. The organizer has not printed an opening date, a closing date or even a year for any round after 2019; confirm on the live ballot each cycle. That gap is worth taking seriously because the platform's dated URLs mean a new edition would appear at a fresh address, and an old bookmark to the 2016 page will keep showing a closed contest no matter what the charity is running this winter.

How a supporter votes on this ballot today

The mechanic is a gallery vote. A supporter opens the GoGo Photo Contest page for the current round, uses the View Entries link to browse the pet photos, and casts votes for the entries they want to see win. The navigation on every round of this ballot is the same five links: Participate, View Entries, Contest Rules, Prizes, Rules and About, with a Sign In control for account holders.

The one printed vote rule comes from the 2016 round: a minimum of five votes per each order. That shaped how supporters gave, since a single-vote gesture did not fit the ballot's own structure and support had to arrive in batches of at least five. Whether a newer round keeps that minimum, lowers it or raises it is not printed anywhere current, so the rules tab on the live ballot is the place to read before organizing a push.

Timing runs on Eastern Time. The 2016 page displayed its countdown against that clock and closed at 9:59:59 PM on January 31, so a supporter near the deadline should assume the ballot's own clock, not their local one, decides whether a vote lands. Anyone planning support for a pet entry can also read our guide to getting more votes online, which covers outreach patterns that suit a small-city gallery vote like this one, where a few dozen determined supporters can move an entry up the board.

How this ballot sits beside its New York neighbours

Chautauqua County's fundraiser is unusual in this part of our New York coverage, where most confirmed ballots are business readers polls. The state's sibling programs include Best of Brooklyn, Best of Hudson Valley, The City's Best, Best of New York City, Best of Queens, Best of the Bronx and Best of Westchester. Every one of those is a best-of ballot where local businesses compete across many categories.

Hot Dogs, Cool Cats is a different animal in both senses. It is a single-cause pet photo vote rather than a category-by-category business ranking, its market is a small lake-country city rather than a downstate metro, and its platform is GoGo Photo Contest rather than the readers-poll software those six run on. The practical consequence for a supporter is that strategy does not transfer cleanly: a best-of campaign chases many category leads, while this ballot is one gallery, one winner, and the CCHS Pet of the Year title as the single prize.

What the two shapes share is the public-vote mechanic and the need to read each ballot's own rules. A supporter moving between this contest and a downstate best-of poll should treat them as separate programs with separate publishers, separate clocks and separate vote rules, and check each live ballot rather than assuming one market's habits apply to the other.

Strengthening support for a pet entry in this fundraiser

Support in a small-market gallery vote is won by repetition and reach. Start with the ballot's own structure: the 2016 rules wanted at least five votes per order, so batch your asks in fives and give every supporter a direct link to your pet's entry page rather than to the gallery root. Share the poker-face theme in your ask, since a contest that casts your beagle as the Ace of Spades gives friends a line to repeat when they forward it.

No ballot page states where the charity stands on outside help, and no published rule addresses purchased votes either way; the five-vote minimum is the only vote rule the 2016 round stated. That makes the rules tab on the live ballot the first thing to read before spending anything. If you do decide to add paid support, our award votes page explains what a purchase involves, and our service overview covers the mechanics. No service, ours included, can guarantee a win in a public vote; what a purchase can do is add volume on top of the organic asks you and other pet owners in Chautauqua County are already making.