2nd Annual Top Dog Cider Can Label Contest: How Voting Works & How to Win

A shelter fundraiser with a cider label at stake

If you have a comely canine and a fondness for Vermont cider, this ballot puts both to work. The 2nd Annual Top Dog Cider Can Label Contest is a canine photo fundraiser staged by the Humane Society of Chittenden County, the shelter at 142 Kindness Ct in South Burlington, Vermont. Dog owners submit a photo and a short bio of their dog, and the community votes for its favorite pooch. The winning dog's image becomes a cider can label, which is where the program's name comes from.

The ballot page itself sits on GoGo Photo Contest, a service built around nonprofit photo fundraisers, at gogophotocontest.com/hscctopdog2025. Money raised through entries and votes goes to the shelter's animal welfare work in Chittenden County. For a dog owner deciding whether to enter, the practical picture is simple: a $10 entry puts your dog on the ballot, and every vote cast afterward is a $1 donation. That makes the fundraiser unusual among public votes, because the organizer is paid by supporters directly rather than relying on free clicks alone.

This page sits alongside Vermont's other public-vote programs, which are mostly media-run readers' choice ballots such as the Seven Daysies or the Rutland Herald Best of the Best. This one answers to a single charity instead of a publisher, and its prize is a product label rather than a badge.

The 2025 dates and what the shelter has not published

The confirmed 2025 dates are precise. The Submission and Voting Period started at 8:00 AM Eastern Time on Tuesday, August 26, 2025 and ended at 8:00 PM Eastern Time on Tuesday, September 30, 2025, so entry and voting shared a single window of roughly five weeks. The shelter stated it would notify finalists at the conclusion of the voting period, October 1, 2025, and if potential winners could not be reached, alternate arrangements applied under its rules.

Two editions are on file: the first in 2024 and the second in 2025, which is what earns the program the word Annual in its own title. The 2025 ballot's slug, hscctopdog2025, carries the year, so a future edition would be expected to follow the same pattern on the same platform.

The shelter has not put the judging category list on the ballot page, nor any breakdown beyond the single top dog prize implied by the program's name; confirm on the live ballot each cycle. The page body, as archived, carries the window, the entry and vote prices, and the finalist notification plan, and stops there. A supporter planning an entry strategy around categories or tiered prizes will not find that structure published for the 2025 edition, and no other organizer document covered on this page supplies it.

Compared with a media readers' choice ballot such as the Brattleboro Reformer Readers' Choice, which typically spreads many business categories across one season, this fundraiser concentrates everything on dogs and a single label prize.

How a supporter votes on this ballot

The mechanic is a paid vote, not a free click. A supporter opens the GoGo Photo Contest ballot, browses the entries under View Entries, picks a dog, and chooses how many $1 votes to buy. Every vote doubles as a donation to the Humane Society of Chittenden County, so the ballot converts affection for a dog into shelter funding at a published rate. Entering a dog cost $10 in 2025, paid at submission along with the photo and short bio.

Because every vote carries a dollar price, the organizer's rules treat purchases as the ordinary path rather than an exception, which changes the whole strategy conversation. The ballot leaves unstated how often one person may vote, whether votes can be spread across days, and what eligibility conditions apply to an entered dog. None of those rules appear alongside the archived 2025 page, and a supporter who cares about them should ask the shelter directly rather than assume.

The platform side is straightforward: GoGo Photo Contest handles payment and vote tallying, and the shelter reviews the result. Finalists heard from the organizer the day after the window closed, so a supporter's job ends when payment completes. Anyone weighing paid support options can compare this in-ballot route with award vote services, but the starting point for any comparison is that this organizer already sells votes itself at a known price.

Where this ballot sits among Vermont's public votes

Vermont's public-vote landscape splits into two kinds of ballot. Most are publisher polls: the Best of Business Awards from Vermont Business Magazine, the Rutland Herald Best of the Best, the Stowe Reporter Readers' Choice, the Seven Daysies, and the Caledonian-Record Athlete of the Week. Each of those is free to vote in and earns the publisher audience. This Top Dog ballot is the other kind: a single-charity fundraiser where voting is the donation.

That difference matters for entrants. A business competing in a readers' choice ballot is usually mobilizing customers; a dog owner here is mobilizing friends, family and dog lovers, and each of them pays a dollar per vote to a shelter they may already support. The ask is softer, because the money goes to a cause with a physical shelter in South Burlington rather than to a media company's traffic metrics.

It also changes what outside help means. On a free poll, buying votes raises the question of what the organizer permits; here, the organizer sells votes itself, so the question collapses into how many dollars a supporter wants to contribute. The shelter's own pricing is the benchmark any other route has to beat, and its rules are the only ones that count on this ballot.

Strengthening a dog's standing in this fundraiser

Because votes are priced donations, support for a dog in this program comes from wide, honest asks. Share your dog's entry link with a short note about the shelter, remind people that each dollar is a real contribution, and repeat the ask in the final week of the window, when fundraiser contests of this shape see their heaviest voting. A dog whose owner raises $100 through fifty small asks has done exactly what the organizer designed the ballot to reward.

Work with the entry itself too: a clear photo and a bio that gives people a reason to care will earn unpaid votes from strangers browsing View Entries, and those strangers can vote many times if they choose. The shelter has published no rule capping how much any one supporter may spend on a dog, which is consistent with a fundraiser where spending is the point. If you are weighing other routes, our guide to getting more votes online covers methods that work on any public ballot, and this one's paid structure makes the simplest tactic, simply asking more people, unusually effective.