Dedicated Online Guardians - D.O.G. Books

Guest Author: Steve Shepherd and Samantha Meghawry

On her sixth birthday, a young girl called Fizz unwraps a present many children dream of: her first connected device. It's the opening scene of our first book, and it's also where D.O.G. - Dedicated Online Guardians began: a simple question about how you talk to a young child about the internet without frightening them, patronising them, or losing them halfway through the sentence.

What D.O.G. Is

At the heart of the stories is Fizz's family: Mum, Dad and Pixel, their loyal St Bernard puppy and a Dedicated Online Guardian in training, who earns a gold star on his collar every time Fizz learns something new. They create a familiar world where Fizz can make mistakes and ask for help, while her friend Seth often sparks the dilemma that moves each story forward. It's also where the programme's name comes from: Pixel is quite
literally a D.O.G. - a Dedicated Online Guardian.

Five books are published so far. Miss-Information introduces Fizz and Pixel, and the idea of checking with a trusted adult before believing something online. Take Care Before You Share deals with consent and digital footprints, after a photo of Fizz is shared without her permission. Pixel's Password Puzzle tackles passwords and safe usernames, after Seth's account is hacked. The Cosmic Companions covers online gaming safety and the Stop, Block, Tell approach to strangers in games. Bewitched by Screens looks at screen time
and balance. A sixth book, on AI, is in development.

Beyond the books

The books are only where D.O.G. starts, not where it ends. Around them, we've built a proper system of work for schools: classroom session plans and facilitator packs so a teacher can run a lesson without building it from scratch, discussion activities and games that let children rehearse decisions and practice asking for help rather than just hearing what they should do, and parent and carer resources that carry the same conversation home.

Our first school pilot has now finished, and we're preparing the full evaluation. In the final session, parents came into school, and the children became the guides, proudly leading their families through the activities and explaining what they'd learned. A licensing model is in development so more schools can bring the programme in properly.

Who are we?

We are Steve and Sam. Sam is Founder and Creative Director and Programme Developer, and runs Little Star Design Studio. Steve is Co-Author and Online Safety Specialist, and runs Inspiring Joe Ltd. Steve had spent lots of time working in schools, where he kept seeing the same problem: online safety messaging that either talked down to young children or missed them completely. Sam was already writing her own books about social and emotional intelligence. D.O.G. is what happened when those two things met, built on the idea that online safety needs to start earlier. We brought Fizz, Pixel and their world to life to support children, parents and teachers.

Why we started here

Most online safety education, understandably, targets older children already carrying phones and navigating social platforms unsupervised. But Ofcom's 2026 research found that although 

more than 8 in 10 children (85%) recalled having had at least one lesson about online safety at school,
fewer than 1 in 4 (23%) said they got them regularly. 

If that's already the case well before secondary school, waiting until then to start the conversation properly is too late for a great many children.

We built D.O.G. to start earlier: story-led, screen-free in how it's delivered, and pitched at Key Stage 1, not adapted down from something written for teenagers. Children this age are already online, often before anyone has talked to them about it, and deserve lessons written for their stage, not borrowed from someone else's.

Why we're telling you this?

Many of you reading this spend your working lives thinking about the problems D.O.G. is trying to solve in miniature: verifying information before trusting it, knowing when to escalate rather than guess, protecting what shouldn't be shared, keeping password hygiene from becoming an afterthought. You've built careers on the instinct that Miss-Information is trying to teach a young child.

Many of you are also parents, aunts, uncles or grandparents who want the best start for the children in your lives, part of why we're glad to be writing for this community rather than a purely parenting one. You understand digital risk better than most audiences we could reach, and some of you work for organisations that could help this go further than two people and a good idea alone.

Over the next eleven weeks, we'll walk through each book, the system behind them, and what we're learning from the pilot, drawing the line between what we teach young children and what many of you already practice professionally. 

We're not making a formal ask. We wanted you to meet Fizz, Seth and Pixel properly, and to give children a fair start online, years before anyone else usually thinks to have that conversation with them.

Children are entering the digital world earlier than ever, often before they have the experience or language to recognise risk. The D.O.G. books make online safety accessible at exactly the right time, using memorable stories and relatable characters to explore sharing, privacy, misinformation, gaming and screen time. Crucially, they do more than warn children; they build emotional resilience, critical thinking and the confidence to seek help.

We're pleased to have been chosen by Sam and Steve to support them in raising awareness of these creatively written and beautifully illustrated children's books across both our Channel and Buyer communities.  We think it's important to help more technology leaders, parents, teachers and schools discover practical books that can start important conversations before problems exist. 

More information and how to buy the books can be found at www.thedoguk.com