The Beautiful Bulldog Contest is an annual tradition at Drake University.
Drake University will be holding the 40th edition of their Beautiful Bulldog Contest in April.
190 Bulldogs from 23 states have been entered in Drake University’s 2019 Beautiful Bulldog Contest, vying for the title of Most Beautiful Bulldog. Presumably both English Bulldogs and French Bulldogs can compete,, though Dog O’Day was unable to confirm this.
The canine beauty pageant, which will be held on Monday, April 22, will have 39 participants selected via a lottery on Monday, March 18 at 6 p.m. in the Knapp Center in Des Moines, Iowa. Ten Iowa-based alternate selections will also be chosen at the lottery.
The final slot, No. 40, will be chosen by a fan vote on the contest’s Facebook page, and voting will run from Friday, March 22 to Friday, April 5. The Bulldog with the most likes in the photo album will be the final dog selected.
Dog O’Day learned of this contest through the Drake website. Drake’s sports teams are known as the Bulldogs, and they play in the Missouri Valley Conference in Division I.
There will be three judges during the contest to help select the winner.
Most notably, one of the judges will be Gideon Kidd of I’ve Pet That Dog. Gideon is described as a “professional dog petter” on the Drake website. I’ve Pet That Dog makes the internet a much more pleasant place, which explains why it has over two hundred thousand followers on Twitter, 28 thousand on Instagram and close to five thousand on Facebook.
The other judges will be former Drake basketball player Aliou Keita, who is a vice president at the Lincoln Savings Bank, and local radio personality Nadia Valentine, who co-hosts the morning show on Des Moines rock station LAZER 103.3 FM.
The Meredith Corporation, which is the parent company of FanSided, is headquartered in Des Moines.