Prizes

First place: $1,000

Second place: $500

Third place: $250

Dates to know

June 5, 2020: Submissions open

June 11, 2020, 11:59 PM EST: Submissions close

June 16: Winners announced

About

As always, this week's Challenge comes as a way to spark creativity and inspire our creators to share their stories. While we encourage you to join the conversations happening in response to racism and violence in our Voices for Change Challenge, we also want to give you an opportunity to celebrate some things that universally bring joy. When it comes to unconditional love, we can’t help but think of our furry friends who are always there for us.

We know lots of you are huge animal lovers too, so we want to hear more about you and your pets. Tell us your story—how did you meet? What’s unique about them, or what things do they do that are super funny, or surprisingly intelligent? What made you decide that they were the one? How have they changed your life for the better? Help us get to know your pets, what makes them so special, and share all those photos we know you have of them in your camera roll.

Requirements

For your story to be eligible, it must be between 600 and 5,000 words and adhere to our Community Guidelines. Stories published on Vocal and entered into the contest up until June 11, 2020, at 11:59 PM EST will be entered for consideration. Official Rules for the Challenge can be found here.

The Pets Welcome Challenge is exclusive to Vocal+ members. To learn more and upgrade to Vocal+ visit https://vocal.media/vocal-plus.

To be eligible to win the grand prize, second place, or third place prizes, you must be over the age of 13 and residing in a country where Stripe is available at the time of entry. A complete list of countries where Stripe is available can be found here—winners will need to have a Stripe account created and connected in order to receive the prizes. For this reason, entrants located outside of any of these 35 countries will not be eligible to win.