2010 Cancer Can't Keep A Good Dog Down Voting Instructions

How will we decide which dog represents each month? Well, here's where you come in. Everyone gets to decide. Everyone gets to vote. So please pass the word to friends, family, co-workers, vets, shelters, rescues, groomers, Great Aunt Bessie in Duluth – well, everybody!

Here's how voting works. Photos and stories are up on our web site. For a small donation of $1.00 per vote, everyone gets to vote for his or her favorite dog(s). For example, if you want to vote 10 times for your best friend Sparkles, you would click on Sparkles' photo, donate $10.00 for Sparkles, and she would then get 10 votes. Or you can split your votes. If you like several dogs (of course you do), you would donate X number of dollars for each dog you like and each dog would get that number of votes. Even better -- you can vote as many times as you want. This means you can vote multiple times for one dog, or one time for multiple dogs, or any variation thereof, and come back throughout the voting period to keep your favorite dogs in the running by casting more $1.00 votes. The 13 dogs with the largest number of votes win their months on the calendar.

It's really very simple: $1.00 donation* = 1 vote and you can vote as many times as you want for as many dogs as you want until voting ends September 20th at 12 midnight EDT..

Now here's the other great news. No dog loses! While there will be only 13 dogs on the main calendar, (one for each month and one on the cover) all the other dogs in the contest will still have their photos published in the photo galleries in the calendar. Every dog's photo will be in the calendar!

Each calendar is a lasting tribute to those beautiful dogs who struggled with and are still struggling against this disease, so please give them as gifts to vet clinics, rescues, shelters, and groomers, as well as family, friends and colleagues.

*A percentage of your donations goes directly to the veterinary oncology programs at Texas A&M University, Colorado State University, and Tufts University.

Last year we donated 10% of the gross sales to Morris Animal Foundation. This year, since we're donating to three veterinary oncology programs, the percentage will be determined by the total proceeds raised. Finally, what doesn't go into paying for the cost to print and ship the calendars is used to support all of the education and awareness 2 Dogs 2000 Miles does for canine cancer.

PLEASE NOTE: We recently experienced some problems with Click & Pledge. Originally Luke has set the page to load all 99 photos and stories at once. This made voting for more than one dog easy since you didn't have to move from one screen to another, and you needed to process your credit card only once. However, it was taking so long for the page to load for some people the process timed out before all the photos and stories were loaded, making it impossible for some people to vote! So we changed it to reflect the same photo galleries as on our web pages. This made the process of loading Click & Pledge faster but it also created a new problem. Now each time you vote for a dog on a different screen, you have to resubmit your credit card number. For example, if you want to vote for Dog X on page 1 and also Dogs Y and Z on page three, you have to enter your credit card for Dog X then re-enter your credit card for Dogs Y and Z. The question is, which arrangement is less problematic for people? Please send us your feedback and let us know which setup you prefer. We can go back to the entire 99 dogs loading on one page, which slows the page loading and may interfere with your voting, or we can keep it as it now is but you may have to enter your credit card several times if you are voting for several dogs on different pages. We'll take comments to feedback@2dogs2000miles.org today and tomorrow and based on your feedback, leave well enough alone or go back to the original set-up.

Important Notice: 2 Dogs 2000 Miles has filed for a 501 c3 status. According to the IRS while we are waiting for approval from them we may operate as a tax-exempt organization. Although donors have no assurance that contributions are tax-deductible for federal income tax purposes until the application is approved, contributions made while an application is pending would qualify if the application is approved. However, if the application is disallowed, contributions would not qualify. According to the IRS the approval process can take up to 6 months. Please direct questions to ginger@2dogs2000miles.org.