How a Real Great Dane Became a Children’s Book Narrator

Long before Sig Shue became the narrator of Puppy Bedtime Stories, the @shuezoo Instagram account was already being written from a dog’s point of view.

That dog was Remington—Remi—a beloved blue mantle Great Dane who had been part of our family since 2018. Remi wasn’t just featured in photos. His posts were written in his voice, imagining what he might think about the adventures, indignities, snacks, and everyday happenings of life with his humans.

Over time, writing from the perspective of my heart dog became second nature.

As life got busier and then Remi became sick, @shuezoo grew quieter. On February 13, 2025, the account shared the heartbreaking news that Remi had died two days before.

And then @shuezoo went quiet.

The next post didn’t appear until May 2 of that year. This time, a merle Great Dane puppy was looking out from the screen.

“Hi, furends! My name is Sig.”

Just like that, Sig had inherited @shuezoo—and the tradition of telling his own stories.

At the time, those stories were only Instagram posts about life as a Great Dane puppy. Neither of us had any idea that, before his first birthday, Sig would also become the narrator of his own children’s book series.

On September 27, 2025, I had a small idea.

Sig loves treats from Green Butterfly Brands, and I wondered what a little rhyming poem about those treats might look like for his Instagram account.

So I started playing with the idea with my AI collaborator, Atlas. Together, we wrote a poem from Sig’s point of view.

Then Atlas offered to illustrate it.

That sounded fun.

It was also, in retrospect, how the trouble started.

We made an illustration of a little Great Dane puppy looking up at a glowing moon. Then we experimented with another illustration—a puppy whose coloring was patterned like Sig asleep in his bed, dreaming about treats.

There was still no plan to make a book.

But one poem led to another. New ideas kept appearing. There were crunchy autumn leaves to investigate, pumpkins to inspect, nighttime adventures to imagine, family moments to celebrate, and an entire East Tennessee world to experience through the eyes of a curious Great Dane puppy.

At some point, a collection of poems and illustrations stopped looking like Instagram content.

It started looking suspiciously like a children’s book.

The illustrated Sig in Puppy Bedtime Stories isn’t simply a generic Great Dane character with Sig’s name attached.

He’s based on a very real dog.

Real Sig is a merle Great Dane with floppy ears, amber eyes, enormous paws, abundant curiosity, and some fairly strong opinions about how life should work.

The stories take pieces of his real world—his family, his home, the valleys and mountains of East Tennessee, changing seasons, animals, outings, and ordinary moments—and imagine how all of it might look to him.

That’s where writing in Sig’s voice becomes so much fun.

An ordinary autumn leaf isn’t necessarily ordinary if this is your first autumn. A strange sound in the night deserves investigation. Something humans barely notice might be the most fascinating thing a puppy has encountered all day.

Writing from Sig’s perspective gives us permission to make the familiar feel new again.

That accidental collection of poems became Puppy Bedtime Stories: Autumn Collection.

And apparently we hadn’t learned our lesson.

As Sig experienced his first year, there were more stories to tell. Autumn became Winter. Winter became Spring. Spring became Summer.

Eventually, the original accidental book had become the four-book Seasons Collection, following Sig through his first year of discoveries and adventures.

The little Instagram poem about dog treats had officially gotten out of hand.

But Sig’s first year eventually came to an end.

So what could possibly happen next?

The first four books were inspired largely by the world around Sig.

For the next books, we decided to remove one inconvenient limitation:

Reality.

The Sig Dreams Collection imagines what might happen after Sig closes his eyes.

His bed can fly over the East Tennessee mountains. The moon can become a giant ball. He can run among the stars. Giant dogs in the clouds can make thunder with their paws. He can become bigger than Dad simply because, in a dream, why shouldn’t he?

The same puppy voice is still there, but now his imagination has an entire universe to explore.

What began as stories about a puppy discovering his world became stories about what that puppy might dream when the world wasn’t quite big enough.