Joplin Globe Cutest Pet Contest: How Voting Works & How to Win

What Second Street actually confirms about the Joplin Globe's Cutest Pet Contest

The Joplin Globe, a daily newspaper based in Joplin, Missouri, runs its Cutest Pet Contest through Second Street, a voting platform several regional newspapers use for reader contests. The program's page sits at joplinglobe.secondstreetapp.com, hosted directly under the Joplin Globe's own market on that platform. The 2025 round ran June 26 through July 27, 2025, and closed once that window ended; a 2024 round also confirms the contest existed the year before.

Two confirmed rounds is enough to call the contest a repeat program rather than a one-off, but not enough to say a fixed month always hosts it going forward; confirm on the live ballot each cycle before assuming next year's window lands on the same dates.

The Joplin Globe's own market on Second Street carries other promotions beyond this pet contest, run at different times of year for different purposes. Nothing about those other promotions changes what's true of the Cutest Pet Contest itself: two rounds confirmed, a June-to-July window each time, and no published detail beyond that.

A pet vote, not one of Missouri's business readers'-choice ballots

Several Missouri newspapers and magazines run readers'-choice business polls, and it's worth being clear that the Joplin Globe's pet contest is not one of them. Judging a favorite veterinarian, restaurant or shop isn't part of this ballot; the subject is pets themselves, entered with a photo and voted on directly.

None of those six programs judge pets, and nothing entered in one of them carries over to the Joplin Globe's own tally; each judges its own separate subject under its own publisher.

What the Joplin Globe hasn't published about entries and voting

Beyond the two confirmed rounds and the 2025 dates, joplinglobe.secondstreetapp.com stays quiet on specifics. There's no breakdown separating dogs, cats, birds or other pets into their own groups, so every entry appears to compete on one shared list. There's also nothing spelling out a daily voting limit or whether one household is capped at a single total.

No published rule separates how often a person may vote from whether a household counts once or many times over the contest's run; confirm on the live ballot each cycle rather than guessing at either number.

The contest also doesn't say whether a strong showing in 2024 carried any advantage into 2025. Each round appears to start its tally over, with no head start the platform discloses for a returning pet.

A pet owner reading the page today gets two firm data points, the 2024 and 2025 windows, and little else to plan around. That's thinner than a program with a decade of published rules behind it, but it's still more than a first-year contest offers, since the pattern of a summer window has repeated twice now rather than once.

Building support for a pet before the next round opens

With only two confirmed rounds and no fixed calendar date, the practical approach is watching joplinglobe.secondstreetapp.com as summer approaches, since both rounds seen so far landed in the June-to-July stretch. Entering promptly once a new round opens, and reaching out to the same supporters more than once rather than only at the start, fits a contest that hasn't yet settled into a rigid annual pattern. Sharing a clear photo widely among people who already follow the pet, rather than a single mass post, tends to hold attention across a month-long window better than one attempt ever could.

A pet entered in 2025 had one prior Joplin Globe round, 2024, to point back to, which is more history than a brand-new contest offers even without a fixed date for what comes next. Spending on outside help before that history is understood carries its own risks worth weighing first: is buying votes legal walks through them. Buying votes for a pet photo contest lays out what paid support usually involves for a format like this, and building real momentum for an online ballot works even where no vote cap has been posted.