Team_cuddle_finals

I can’t even tell you how hard it was to go through the entries in the Freshpet Team Cuddle contest and pick the top five in each category. First of all, there were over 7000 entries. That’s about ten solid hours of sorting through cuddling photos.

Thankfully, all your kids and pets are ridiculously cute so it wasn’t too painful. Not to mention, many of you have some pretty impressive photo-taking skills.

Which actually makes the job of narrowing down to the finalists even tougher. All of the adorableness in the photos above? None of them made it. I had a really time letting some of those cuddlers go.

But it wasn’t all my decision. Both Freshpet and Jessica from Momma’s Gone City weighed in with their favorites too. (Translation: Don’t blame me if your photo wasn’t picked!)

My favorite thing about the photos we chose (and really all of the entries), is that you just can’t fake this kind of love to win a contest. Babies and pets aren’t going to cuddle together just because you ask them to for a photo.

The love here is real.

Thank you to everyone for sharing your beautiful photos. Looking through them has been a daily bright spot over the last few weeks that I will truly miss.

Here are the twenty finalists. Please vote for your favorite at the bottom of each cateory. You can vote once a day until 7pm ET on March 9th. The winners wil be announced on March 10th.

TOTS & PUPS

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Team_cuddle_finalists2

Team_cuddle_finalists4

Team_cuddle_finalists5

Team_cuddle_finalists

KIDDOS & KITTIES

Team_cuddle_finalists14

Team_cuddle_finalists12

Team_cuddle_finalists16

Team_cuddle_finalists15

Team_cuddle_finalists13

SIBLING SNUGGLE

Team_cuddle_finalists7

Team_cuddle_finalists9

Team_cuddle_finalists8

Team_cuddle_finalists10

Team_cuddle_finalists6

FAMILY CUDDLE

Team_cuddle_finalists20

Team_cuddle_finalists18

Team_cuddle_finalists17

Team_cuddle_finalists21

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The winner of each category will receive a $250 cash gift card plus a $50 gift basket from Freshpet if your photo includes a pet. The grand prize winner will receive a $1000 cash gift card.

Please vote for your favorite photo across all the categories in the poll below for the $1000 grand prize.

GIVEAWAY


In addition to supplying prizes for the winners, Freshpet is giving away a $50 gift basket to one lucky reader who comments on this post. Just visit Freshpet.com and come back to tell me one thing you learned about feeding pets fresh food in the comment section below. Please include your pet’s name and which Freshpet treat he/she would like the most.

Freshpet treats have meaty options like chicken, beef, turkey bacon, plus chewy sweet potatoes, ready-to-bake cookies, and lickable ice creams and yogurts. Like all Freshpet products, they are all natural and never made with corn, wheat, or soy, so you can give your pet something delicious and feel good about it too.

Freshpet_treats

Freshpet will also be donating $5000 to the SPCA, the Santa Cruz shelter where Jessica adopted Theo. Raising money for the SPCA has been a long time cause for Jessica, so we couldn’t be more thrilled Freshpet stepped up to the plate.

Good luck to everyone in the contest! I hope your little ones and furry friends keep cuddling together for as long as humanly (and petly?) possible.

All winners will be announced on March 10th.

Who are you rooting for?