Dear readers,
We screwed up. As was pointed out in a post on Loki’s feed early this morning, we have been talking to the owners of several Colorado-based pets about including them in 5280 magazine’s upcoming pet guide and on our November cover. We narrowed the potential cover stars down to two finalists—Loki and Aspen the Mountain Pup—and both account owners shared high-resolution photos with our staff for consideration. We mocked up two potential covers, both of which we thought were great. When we couldn’t decide which one to use, we thought it would be fun to let our readers decide. Because the magazine is due at the printer next week, we needed to move quickly, and in our rush, we didn’t ask either account owner if it was OK to feature their dogs in the contest. That was our mistake, and we apologize for it.
Some commenters have suggested that we stole photos of the dogs without their owners’ permission. This is not the case. We always compensate photographers when their work is published on our cover and within our pages—the same would be true for Loki’s and Aspen’s owners. And yes, we do collect email addresses in all of our contests, not only to help grow our audience, but also as a way to prevent people from voting more than once and to verify that the votes are legitimate and not spam.
We’ve spoken with Aspen’s owner, and have reached out to Loki’s owner and are waiting to hear back. We love the idea of contributing to Maxfund, as was suggested on Loki’s page, or another animal-focused nonprofit. We look forward to talking with the dogs’ owners in more detail, and finding a way to make this right.
As always, we welcome your feedback. You can reach us at digital@5280.com.
—The 5280 editors