To all of the amazing Volunteers throughout this event, OK Humane appreciates you more than you can ever know!  There is no way we could have done this event without each and every one of you.  Thank you so much for your dedication to the cause, watching the contestants through rain or shine, and answering all the questions that people had about the event and the reason behind it.

A special shout-out to all of our overnight volunteers, you are the only reason I got any sleep at all through this event!

Amy Shrodes
amy@okhumane.org
Volunteer Coordinator/Development Assistant

Thanks again to Tanya L. for going down to the Chainoff site and taking some GREAT photos again on Thursday!

On this evening of September 17th, the contestant “Princess” was disqualified from the My Life as a dog challenge. The disqualification occured due to a rule infraction of talking with her visitors. The contestants were issued clear warnings as to the nature of what constituted talking with anyone other than media or OK Humane staff and volunteers. The infraction was witnessed and recorded by multiple contestants, volunteers and a member of the medical staff.

OK Humane is in deep gratitude to “Princess” for her willingness to participate in the contest. Her participation raised great awareness to the inhumane nature of keeping dogs on chains in our community. We applaud her and her fantastic supporters for their role in the overwhelming success of this competiton. As a result we believe many dogs in our community will begin to live better lives.

Our thanks to Tanya L. for taking these pictures and sharing them with us! Everyone was huddled in the doghouses Wednesday night to get out of the relentless rain…but in good spirits!

Hopefully no one is having any more technical problems with the voting. Whether or not you’re happy with the results, rest assured that they are accurate.

As you know, the last day of the contest is Saturday; the remaining contestants will be officially unchained at noon on Saturday. The winner will be announced at 1:00 p.m.

Because of the incredible volume of votes we are receiving on the polls each day, we will be closing the polls at 9:00 a.m. on Saturday morning. So that means the Saturday polls will only be open for 3 hours: from 6am to 9am. At 9am, we will close the polls and get to work counting the votes (and removing the fraudulent votes) for Saturday. Then we’ll combine all the votes for every day, and determine the winner.

The contestant who receives the most votes overall (assuming there is more than one left!) will be determined the winner.

So get out the vote Saturday morning!

OK Humane overlooked our own rules and accidentally allowed a contestant to bring a food item in their luxury item bag, which was purchased as a donation through the web site.

Since this oversight wasn’t the fault of the contestant, it isn’t right to disqualify this person.

Instead, we are going to even the playing field a bit! Our Executive Director is out among the dogs right now handing out Oreos, nutter butters and sun chips. Everyone has been asking for snacks, so we hope this will lift all their spirits!

Details to follow!

Hey everyone. OK Humane webmaster here. We are well aware of all the comments and suspicions about people hacking the voting. Obviously the voting is going to be an important component in this contest, because all our contestants are so tough!

Please be assured that even if people are able to cheat and vote multiple times (and yes, it HAS happened), we record every IP address of every vote that comes in. If we see 150 votes from 1 IP address (and we know it’s not a company or school where there would potentially be 150 people voting), we will remove those votes. If we see multiple votes from that IP address again, we will block it, so that person cannot vote again.

This contest will be fair. We are maintaining records of every single vote cast, and are working with our poll software to flag and remove false votes.

We know everyone is very concerned about this contest being fair and the voting being accurate. WE ARE TOO! Your hard work and support of your favorite contestant is appreciated and will not be in vain. Only legitimate votes will be counted. Don’t bother cheating, because your votes will be removed. People will still try…but we’re gonna get ‘em!

If you have any concerns, please email me at webmaster@okhumane.org. (and you don’t need to email me to tell me there is cheating going on….I already know).

Howdy folks! Here are a few photos from the first day of the Chainoff, Saturday, September 12! We greatly appreciate Tanner from Level 9 Design (they also are providing ALL our wireless Internet during the event!) for taking these pictures.

Our friends and volunteers at TAP Architecture have gone WAY above and beyond to make these incredible doghouses. Here are the finished photos! They may look awesome, but would YOU want to spend your entire life chained to one? Neither does your dog…as cool as they may be.
[flickr-gallery mode="photoset" photoset="72157622321716952"]

All the contestants got together for the first time Wednesday at the contestant orientation. Christy Counts, executive director of the Central Oklahoma Humane Society, made sure everyone understood the rules and answered all the questions. Everyone seemed to get along…but the contestants were definitely sizing up the competition!

We still need some volunteers to fill some day shifts during this awareness event in Bricktown!

KJ 103 is interviewing contestants on the air all week long! Tune in to hear who may be competing in the Challenge. Remember, The Central Oklahoma Humane Society has no input in the selection of contestants. We decided to leave those decisions up to KJ103 because so many of our volunteers wanted to apply to participate. So we had to remove ourselves from the decision-making process.

We should be announcing contestants selections soon! Keep checking back!

We have reached the deadline for applications. We received TONS of great applications from people all over the country! We’ll be selecting the contestants over the next couple of weeks. Check back here for the latest news and updates….

The next week the TAP Architecture volunteers were at it again! Construction is progressing well on the eco-friendly doghouses. Have you turned in your application yet for the My Life as a Dog Challenge?

The team from TAP architecture was busy constructing the eco-friendly doghouses for our contestants.