So, you’ve “met” our AZ Puppy Contest 2024 Candidates, but how did we pick them? Short answer? By following the process outlined in the AZ Puppy Contest Handbook. Long answer? Let us explain…
We opened the applications for the AZ Puppy Contest 2024 on February 26th, 2024 after publishing the AZ Puppy Contest Handbook. Our first application came the next day, in fact!
We told everyone the deadline was March 23, which allowed for 4 full weeks of applications. On March 18th, Pup Myah and Pup Zeus hosted a video Q&A on Instagram Live where they answered questions to perspective candidates and interested community members.
We received ten unique applications by the deadline, and all ten met the qualifications. Since there will be only five contestants and more than five applications were received, the applicants would be narrowed by a blind review of their essay answers by a panel of five community leaders.
The judges for the AZ Puppy Contest 2024 Applicants’ Essay Review were (in no particular order):
- Handler Cuix, chosen for their leadership in A-PAH and for their diversity as a trans-identifying person.
- Pup Mosfet, chosen for his leadership of the Tucson Pup Coalition and (formerly) the Desert Leathermen (Tucson-area Leather group).
- Miss Unique, chosen for her leadership in Pups Out and About event, The Bark Park Chat, and Arizona Puppy Mosh event, and for her diversity as a cisgender identifying female.
- Pup Taz, chosen for his leadership in Arizona Puppy Mosh event and the Arizona Pup Play community as a whole.
- Ni’al, chosen for their diversity as a person of color and as a trans-idenitifying person and their leadership in Tucson Pup Coalition.
The judges were provided a Spreadsheet with the applicants’ essays only. There was no information that would match an applicant to an essay, so the judges had no idea who they were choosing from. One essay had a mention of the essay author’s home city and a contest organizer edited that to say [CITY] in order to ensure that essay was as anonymous as possible. Judges were asked to score each essay one to five.
After judges’ scores were returned to the organizers, composite scores were calculated. The “olympic composite” was determined by eliminating the highest and lowest scores for each applicant and adding the remaining scores, giving each essay a score of three to fifteen points.
From the “olympic composite”, a top five were identified, without need for a tiebreaker, and notified of their selection. Upon notifying the top five applicants, one of that top five chose to withdraw, requiring we select our fifth contestant from the sixth place score.
There was a tie for sixth place before the tiebreaker rule was applied. The tiebreaker rule had all five judges’ scores considered, making the tiebreaker essay score now be between five and twenty-five points, and upon applying the tiebreaker, the tie for sixth place was broken by just one point. Now with a clear sixth and seventh place essay, the sixth place candidate was notified and accepted their selection, finalizing our final five contestants.
Congrats to our five contestants of 2024, Pup Lexxi, Pup Stitch, Pup Ace, Pup Wammy, and Pup Nightingale!