‘A Dog’s Story’ is an educational application (for smartphones and tablets) that teaches children on dog safety.

On an adventure through a magical world, children will meet different dogs and their owners - each of whom teaches important real world lessons about how to interact with dogs.

The lessons were created from exhaustive research into the moments when incidents between dogs and children are most likely to happen. We identified them after working with dog behavioural experts, vets, nurses, parents and the Auckland Animal Management Team (the largest animal management team in the Southern Hemisphere).

To bring these lessons to life in a way that children would actively want to engage with, the creation, craft and storytelling approach was rooted in further research we undertook with teachers, children’s authors, parents and most importantly, children themselves.

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.

Launching in April 2016, ‘A Dog’s Story’ is still in its infancy. However, we knew that getting it to 5-9 y/o children & having them actively use it was crucial.

In terms of usage, in the first month users have already spent a total of 2,503 hours on the app learning about dog safety, completing 59,069 lessons.

The average session length is 7 mins 6 seconds; users are spending 30% longer playing A Dog’s Story than the average time spent with educational apps, 89% longer than mobile apps in general.

The most important result however is that Councils and educational boards that are adopting ‘A Dog’s Story’ as their official curriculum for dog education, giving us access to all of NZ’s 400,000 5-9 y/o’s.

Whilst a NZ initiative, it’s far from being a NZ only program. Mars are translating and rolling it out globally, starting with US, France and Germany.