2026 · Champion
Breeze
Border Collie
Winter Garden
$4,000 prize
and $2,000 to Pet Alliance of Greater Orlando
winner's
photoshoot
In her owner's words
Breeze is about eight, and three years ago she was adopted from the Pet Alliance of Greater Orlando — the same shelter this contest raised money for. She shares a house with two older sisters: Cali, a fourteen-year-old kelpie mix, and Bailey, an eleven-year-old golden retriever.
Her owner named her Breeze. Wind or Hurricane, she admits, would have been more accurate. Breeze runs circles around both sisters while chasing a ball, and she takes guarding her family seriously.
Wind or Hurricane, she admits, would have been more accurate.
She led the field into August and never gave the lead back. Life moves fast with a border collie.
- Dogs entered
- 425 every one of them a good dog
- Votes cast
- 214,988
- For Breeze
- 61,858
- Weeks of voting
- 5
972 people voted across the five weeks. The first vote was always free — every one after it was a donation, which is why the total runs so far ahead of the crowd that cast it.
The day
She mostly
wanted the ball.
Her prize was $4,000 and an afternoon in front of a camera. She spent it chasing bubbles, catching a ball with all four paws off the ground, and — briefly, patiently — wearing a tutu.
She went through more bandanas than most models go through outfits. Every photograph on this page is from that one afternoon.
off the ground
the cheque
Four thousand dollars, and she didn't even look at it.
the human
What the votes paid for
$2,000 to the shelter Breeze came from.
Every vote past the free one was a donation. We handed the cheque over at the shelter, in person, with the dogs who live there — the same place Breeze was adopted from three years ago.
None of which was planned. Barbara, Breeze's owner, works at Pet Alliance of Greater Orlando — so the dog who won it, the woman who entered her and the shelter the money went to all came from the same place. A contest we set up to raise money for a shelter was won by one of its own alumni, carried there by her staff.
The search returns
There will be another.
Another $4,000, another afternoon in front of a camera, and another shelter that ends the run better off. Your dog doesn't need to be a border collie, or photogenic, or especially well behaved. Breeze mostly just wanted the ball.