Talented Warehamites put pen to paper with ruff-drafts and paw-traits to compete in the Dog Park Affiliation of Wareham’s seventh youth art and literary contest.

With comfort dogs and paw-some participants among the various works, the celebration for the contest was held Friday, Aug. 15 at the Gleason Family YMCA. This year brought more judges and entrants than ever with the winning works being judged for creativity, skill and the ability to push the themes. 

Event Coordinator for the Dog Park Affiliation of Wareham, Sally Morrison, said that she loved the pieces the children created. 

"The judges had an absolutely great time with this," she said. 

The themes this year were: celebrating creatures great and small in my backyard and beyond and life is better with a pet pal, present or past. 

The contest invites kids aged 5 to 16-years-old to submit a drawing, written piece or both. There are three age groups in the contest: 5-years-old to 8-years-old, 9-years-old to 12-years-old and 13-years-old to 16-years-old.

Literary winners included Scarlett Fluery, Nova Lomp, and Kailyn Ostiguy. The visual winners were Scarlett Fluery, Jacob Ostiguy and Kelly Guaman. 

New this year was the combination category winner, which went to the participant who captured both themes the best. The winner was Brady Benton who drew a photo of his dog.

Brady said he liked to draw the flower shapes the most. Alongside his trophy Brady also won a gift certificate to Ryan's Family Amusements, a prize he said he was excited for.

"I like to play the claw machines," he said. 

Scarlett Fluery took home two trophies this year, although it isn't her first time winning. After taking home first place for a story about her cat Binx in 2024, Scarlett chose to write about cancer this year.

"My mom is a vet tech and she works with animals with cancer," she said.

Her artwork had the same theme, something she said she enjoyed coming up with.

"I drew a bunch of clouds and my daddy 3D printed a cancer awareness sign and we glued it to the collar," she said.

Siblings Kailyn and Jacob Ostiguy are also repeat competitors, however, this was Jacobs first time taking home a trophy. 

"It feels odd, I didn't think I would win," he said. 

Jacob wrote about what a dog does when the owners are away, basing it on his own dogs.

"When she comes back they're really excited. I wrote about the in-between and what they probably do because I never really know," Jacob said. 

Kailyn has won multiple times and based her artwork on her dog at the Wareham Dog Park playing with his friend.

"Whenever they're at the park they just play and play and they enjoy each others company so much," she said. 

She said that she thinks more people should enter the contest and that seeing the other works inspires her.

"A lot of people don't know that this exists. It's a really cool thing and you get prizes regardless of winning or not — it's just fun," she said.