Making sure that the AZ Puppy Contest is fair and that everyone, regardless of their background, age, appearance, popularity, city they come from, pack affiliation, alpha/beta, etc, has a fair opportunity to compete and win was extremely important to the organizers of the first AZ Puppy Contest.
While the nature of events like these lends itself to questions of fairness and favoritism, we aim to be as transparent as possible in hopes of proving to our community that our contestants and, later, titleholders earned their spot!
Making our rules began on February 5th. After the event organizers finished securing venues for the various events and had a general outline for the event, they created a Telegram Group called the “AZ Puppy Weekend Community Leaders’ Roundtable.” A number of AZ Pup community leaders were invited to join it. Those people included multiple leaders from each of A-PAH, AZ Puppy Mosh, Bark Park, the Tucson Pups Coalition, as well as individuals from the Phoenix boys of Leather and Arizona Men of Leather and past leather titleholders.
Early discussions in the group included such topics as “what would we like to expect of our titleholders” and “what should being AZ Puppy mean?” These discussions drove the rule making process.
We then consulted other contests. Some provided high-level advice, while two other Pup’s & Trainer’s/Handler’s Contests provided us their complete rules books and one current titleholder made themselves available to offer advice and thoughts as our rulebook was fashioned. This gave us a huge leg up in creating a fair rulebook, as we had over 20 years of experience handed to us by other events in the spirit of community.
We worked hard to write a draft rulebook using a combination of the wishes of the community roundtable and the guideance of the other events and the other titleholder.
Then the draft was given to the AZ Pup Community Roundtable. They provided feedback resulting in some additional tweaks before we shared it. In the end, our rules closely mirror the other contests’ rules with healthy tweaks based on the community leaders’ vision discussion and feedback.
The rules, including blind selection process and judging rubrics, ensure no one has an advantage in the contest and the results will be fair. We invite anyone interested in the process to review the final rules.
Read our 2024 AZ Puppy Contest Handbook.