Lucy Super Pound Puppy isn’t letting the fact that she may not be the world’s “cutest dog” stymie her efforts to help Sullivan County build a new animal shelter.
The six-month-old Beagle mix and her supporters learned Thursday she did not make it into the final round of the All American Pet Co.’s “Cutest Dog Competition.”
This puts her out of the running for the contest’s $1 million top prize, which Lucy’s owner, Kim Pruden, promised to give to the shelter so a new facility could be built to house the county’s abandoned pets.
“It’s been a rough day,” said Pruden, an avid animal shelter volunteer. “It was all up to the judges and for some reason they picked four other dogs.”
The competition started in the summer with a series of 12 weekly rounds of online voting. Visitors to the contest’s Web site, www.cutestdogcompetition.com, picked their favorite dog out of the competition’s 60,000 entrants. Lucy won the contest’s 10th week of voting, Oct. 6-12. This victory carried a $500 prize and qualified her for the finals round.
The contest’s judges picked their four finalists from the 12 weekly winners, and Lucy was not one of them.
Instead, the judges picked Mozart, a Cavalier King Charles spaniel from New Orleans; Commissioner James Gordon, a Pomeranian from Brooklyn, N.Y.; Tuffy, a mixed breed from Tempe, Ariz.; and Dr. Papidies, a Chihuahua from Englewood, Colo. The $1 million prize is expected to be handed out on Thanksgiving, and the remaining three finalists will receive $5,000, according to the contest Web site.
Pruden took Thursday’s loss as a setback, but also used it to reflect on the amount of support from community members, who she said “really stepped up” and did what they could to move Lucy forward in the competition.
“The support for Lucy and the animal shelter during the past 12 weeks has made me proud to live in the Tri-Cities,” Pruden said.
Besides regularly voting in the contest, Pruden said, Lucy’s supporters posted comments supporting the dog on several Web sites, including her Facebook page, which had 2,300 registered friends as of Thursday afternoon.
They even put together a special video featuring Lucy at several area attractions like Bristol Motor Speedway that Pruden sent to the judges last week to try to sway their votes.
“If we can continue this momentum then that shelter we’ve been dreaming about will become a reality,” Pruden said, promising to keep Lucy out in the community to drum up support for the new facility.
Lucy’s next public event, Pruden said, will be Nov. 21, when the dog will team up with Santa Claus to help raise money for the Sullivan County and Kingsport animal shelters during Kingsport’s Christmas parade.
gmclean@bristolnews.com | (276) 645-2518
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