Globally there is a growing trend in growth in dog bites, and it’s reflected strongly in New Zealand; they’ve been growing by over 10% year on year. In the last decade, that equates to 100,000 incidents, more than 27 every day.

The most likely victim of these bites are children under the age of 9 and what’s more, 75% of these incidents involve a dog that they know. Often the child is left scarred and often the dog is put down.

That the majority of incidents involved dogs that the child knew suggests this is more than just badly trained dogs – it’s a fundamental problem in the education of children and how to behave around dogs.

However, research revealed there’s no consolidated, engaging, scalable education piece for children. The crucial problem of education is simply not being addressed and therefore things are getting worse.

Our educational message had the potential to change lives. However, it needed to be an entertaining experience that children would naturally gravitate to.

A classic story book plot was woven into an interactive game, enabling children to learn correct dog behaviour before encountering them in the real world. We showed how dogs should be approached, what to do when a dog runs toward you, when they should be left alone, and how to read a dog’s body language, all amounting to safer relationships between children and dogs.

Although the app was designed to educate children, many adults don’t understand correct dog behaviour either. So we created a section for parents that taught them the important rules and how they could further educate their children beyond the app.

By partnering with numerous City Councils, starting with Auckland, A Dog’s Story became part of school curriculum in classrooms and communities nationwide.