About Us

The real story behind Buddy & Friends

How a rescued dog and a big family inspired a series of children’s books.

Hello, I’m Cats

My name is Catherine, however since I was very little my family and close friends have called me Cats.

I work in the NHS as a manager for a children’s surgery network. I wanted to write a children’s picture book to promote positive child dog interactions and to raise money for charity.

The idea of publishing a children’s picture book to promote positive and safe dog and child interactions has been bumping around in my head for quite a while so I decided to give it a go and ‘Buddy & Tilda’ came to be.

How Buddy, and Family Inspired the Books

The real story behind the Buddy & Friends adventures.

Buddy was rescued when he was just two weeks old and joined our family at just eight weeks thanks to Hope Rescue. I have a large extended family who aren’t familiar with dogs and I wanted to support the children (and adults) to be comfortable around Buddy and importantly wanted to ensure he was equally comfortable around them. This played a large part in how the book developed.

I had no experience in canine behaviour so took advice from the rescue centre and joined a Facebook Group called the Dog Training and Advice Support Group. I read their articles, benefited from their advice and did my own research and wider reading for reflection. The more I read the more I was aware of the mismatch between many social media images of children interacting with dogs and the reality of what we should be encouraging with regards safe and positive child/dog interaction.

In my role in the NHS I was also aware of a number of sad incidents with children being bitten by family pets and with incidents of dog bites rising, particularly in younger children, I wondered if I might be able to write a fun and friendly story that would hopefully remind children and adults of the best ways to play and spend time with our four-legged friends.

That idea became the starting point for the first story — Buddy & Tilda — which teaches children how to interact safely and kindly with dogs.

Galleries

Photos shared by readers enjoying the Buddy & Friends books.

One of the highlights of writing ‘Buddy & Tilda’ has been the positive reaction from friends, family and people who were previously complete strangers. I started the website with just a small gallery of pictures of Buddy as I thought it was a nice opportunity to share pictures of the ‘star’ of the book however when people started sharing photos of their children and dogs reading the book it made me absolutely delighted so I decided it would be nice to share back in a friends and family gallery.

Family & Friends Gallery

Photos shared by readers enjoying the Buddy & Friends books.

View Gallery

Buddy & Author Gallery

Behind-the-scenes photos of Buddy, the author and the real-life inspiration behind the stories.

See Buddy’s Photos

From the Author

Stories, events and updates from the real life Buddy & Friends activities.

We made the news (letter!)

It was lovely to receive a copy of Bristol & Weston Hospital Charities January newsletter and see our happy faces included. We are so proud that the profits made from the sale of ‘Buddy & Tilda’ will be split equally between Bristol Childrens Hospital and Hope Rescue. It was exciting to see the book being…
Read more: We made the news (letter!)
Author copies arrived today!

We had fun today unboxing our first box of ‘author copies’ of Buddy & Tilda! Not sure it was the best idea to let Buddy help me ‘open the box’ as we both got a bit excited but luckily no books were harmed in the unboxing. I am now planning to gift copies of the…
Read more: Author copies arrived today!