94.5 PST Pet Costume Contest: How Voting Works & How to Win

A New Jersey radio station's pet-photo vote, not a business ballot

The 94.5 PST Pet Costume Contest belongs to WPST, a New Jersey radio station, and runs directly on the station's own site at wpst.com. Owners submit a costume photo of a pet, then the public votes for a favorite, with no third-party voting platform and no charity or magazine sponsor named anywhere in what's published.

WPST's own contest page describes the format plainly: more than 50 pets entered one past round for a single grand prize, dressed in outfits running from dragons and super dogs to peacocks and Pokemon characters. That's a real look at how a small, single-station photo vote actually plays out once entries start coming in.

Whatever isn't pinned down in that table comes down to whatever wpst.com actually publishes once a new October window opens; confirm on the live ballot each cycle.

Seven Octobers running, with one exact window on record from 2017

2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025, 2026: seven separate years carry a confirmed edition of this contest, always landing in October. That kind of run puts WPST's pet costume vote well past the one-off promotion stage and into an annual fixture on the station's own calendar.

The oldest dated detail tied to this contest comes from its 2017 edition: that year's page put voting open October 1 through October 31. Nothing published ties that exact day-to-day window to any later year, including the current one, so day-level dates for 2026 and beyond stay unconfirmed; confirm on the live ballot each cycle.

Why the October pattern still matters for a costume photo push

An owner planning ahead can count on October as the month, based on seven confirmed years of it landing there. What that same owner cannot do yet is pencil in an exact opening or closing date, since only the month, not the day, holds steady across what WPST has actually confirmed about the contest.

A pet-photo vote, not one of New Jersey's readers'-choice ballots

WPST runs several other public-vote programs listed for New Jersey, though each keeps its own web address, its own judging, and its own rules apart from the pet costume vote.

A pet owner entering a costume photo here isn't competing against a dentist, a student athlete, or a Jersey Shore business, and a strong showing in one of those ballots carries no weight toward this one. Confusing the two is an easy search mistake, not a real overlap in who runs what.

Turning WPST's own listeners into real votes

A single-station photo contest like this one lives or dies on people who actually know the pet, not on any published rulebook. With no costume category list and no vote cap published anywhere on wpst.com, the honest approach is asking real supporters directly, more than once, across whatever October window WPST opens next; confirm on the live ballot each cycle before promising anyone a specific number.

Getting a costume photo in front of WPST's own audience, family, coworkers, other pet owners in the same corner of New Jersey, tends to matter more here than any single tactic. Building real momentum for an online ballot covers outreach that works whether or not WPST ever publishes a cap, and is buying votes legal is worth reading before spending money on a station-run photo contest with no posted rulebook to check claims against. Buying votes online explains what that kind of paid help typically looks like for a fan-vote format shaped like this one.

Seven straight years of an October photo contest is also, in its own way, worth trusting: WPST keeps running it year after year, even without ever publishing the rules a bigger, multi-category ballot would need. That simplicity cuts both ways, fewer rules to break, but also fewer guardrails a supporter can point to if a rule gets applied inconsistently. Treat every unpublished detail as unsettled rather than assuming a typical costume-contest default.