Last year we invited readers to take part in a short story competition. The only directive was that the theme of each story had to inspired by one of My Dog Sighs tin can characters. We were overwhelmed by the interest and the large amount of entries we received so it took longer than we’d planned but we finally exhibiting the winner’s stories in store.

The idea for this project came to me while I was visiting My Dog Sighs studio. I asked him he’d ever thought of stories of what had happened to his characters to lead to their emotive expressions. He explained to me that he didn’t but that got me wondering how others might interpret those characters so I decided to run a creative writing competition which is open to all. I split the entries into three categories for different age groups, each with a different word limit.

• 13 years and under (150 words)
• 14 years – 18 years (300 words)
• 18 years and above (500 words)

The three stories have been brought to life by local graphic designer Sam Barclay and signed by My Dog Sighs himself.

I encourage you to pop in the store to check out the exceptional work in person. If you’ve never been to the shop then you can find us at 12 Highland Road, Southsea. The store is open 10am-6pm Tuesday to Saturday.