We wrote the book series as we would like to see the world: fair; tolerant and equal where everyone has equal opportunity and not disadvantaged by their gender, breed, disability or sexuality. 

Early in the story we meet Colin with his disability and in Santa Paws Land we meet Scottish Terrier Jock in his wheelchair that certainly does not hold him back. Remember that Colin has two dads too. It's an ethos through the book. 

We authors have grown up in places where tolerance was, well, tolerated. Karen spent the first seven years of her career working at Selfridges in London and Gill in the fashion industry and lives in cosmopolitan Edinburgh. 

So you can imagine how we are enjoying John and Johannes on Strictly Come Dancing. 

But we were years ahead of the BBC! Back in 2015 on Twitter Stanley and Bailey were strictly contestants!! 

And when Bailey injured his neck (for real) Paddy paw-stepped up and took his place until he got better. 

in the first few chapters we dance the Paw Stomp for the first time. It is celebrated as a dance you can dance girl/boy, boy/boy, girl/girl or in groups!

We are all about acceptance in the books and we hope our young readers feel that too  

The world is changing and mainstream TV has caught up with Tzu Kingdom!!' 

So far, the books have been crowdfunded and that has given us the opportunity to offer our supporters the chance to name a character in Book 3 and 4.

This was a leap of faith as we had no idea what characters or names they would give us but looking back now, we can not imagine the story without them.

In Book 3 we welcomed Brodie,  Otis, Rousey and Zeus. All tzus in the book, in real life they may look slightly different!

Brodie  

 Otis

 Rousey

Zeus (with Sammy)

Brodie was sponsored by his Dad Bryan in his memory, Rousey and Zeus were family dogs of Andrew and Sammy (pictured here with tri-paw Zeus) and Otis was sponsored in his memory by his Mommy Stephanie and Bentz.

We introduced a few new furs in Book 3 and we had to make them feasible and also central to the story, they certainly had to be more than cameos. We quickly found a way to make them just that. Tzu Kingdom does have a rich history and we could make the four lovely fellas a 'retiree group' of friends. We hope you loved the experienced senior tzus making excellent use of their retirements!

In Book 4 we will meet five further sponsored characters: Eddie, Kaos, Opie, Rascal and ZuZu.

Eddie and Opie

 Kaos

Rascal 

ZuZu

Opie was also sponsored by Stephanie for her friend (and Mommy to Winny & Otto) Wendy's much-missed pug and, as a bonus, we were able to include his brother Eddie, also much-missed. ZuZu was sponsored by Cathy and Pixie in honour of a friend's new dachshund. In a bit of a plot twist, they appear as their real breeds!

Rascal was a dog from way back in time sponsored by Maria and the photo above is 20 years old. Kaos is the third character sponsor by Andrew and Sammy. The odd thing is, we were looking for a celebrity dog double-act and it was extraordinary when we saw those names - immediately we had our act!