After 3 weeks of trying to get Luther into the semifinals of the cutest dog competition by winning one week's worth of votes, http://www.cutestdogcompetition/ changed the rules. No longer did it tally votes by unique IP addresses, but it required you to register email addresses to vote.
Um... changing the rules to a contest for $1M in the middle of it?! Something stinks of fixed... and I don't mean the spayed/neutered kind....
The IG community took it in stride and after that week, we still had Luther in the top 5 dogs. However, Luther's owner decided to withdraw Luther from the competition, citing the irregularities, inconsistencies, and just plain old rule changes to the contest making the contest, in her mind, illegitimate and unfair.
I don't blame her. It became clear that the contest organizers had not thought this all through very well. Last I checked, whenever you dangle $1,000,000 in front of the general public, people are going to whatever they can to get it. So you'd better have thought of every scenario and have an answer to it BEFORE it happens. These people running the contest clearly didn't do that.
The IG community was saddened at Luther's withdrawl, but supported Luther's mom's decision whole heartedly. It really did stink like wet dog...
And then last night, I received this email from Luther's mom:
Alex Tabibi, CEO of Dog. com and a bunch of other domains, is paying me $500 for my analysis of the problems with the Cutest Dog Contest. I got us the money without Luther's winning!
Cool? I know!!!!!
Luther got a prize for us after all, in a roundabout way! Goood boy.
- Barb and Luther, Cutest Dog in MY house anyhowBrinkhaven Cairns Possum, Tiger and Woody and a passle o'puddytats
And of course, Barb has donated it directly to IG Rescue, as she promised from the very beginning. Hooray for IG Rescue! And despite all that, Luther was still in the Top 10 dogs of Week 4 of the competition. Good boy, Luther! Reaffirms my faith in "good things coming to good people."
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