Teaching Old Dogs New Tricks: Animating Service Stream’s Safety Protocols

When field workers step onto a customer’s property, they face risks most office workers never consider. 

For Service Stream’s technicians and meter readers, dog encounters represent the single biggest safety hazard in their day-to-day work. 

The challenge wasn’t just documenting a safety protocol, it was making it memorable enough to become instinct in the moment it matters most.

The Challenge

Most people never think about dog safety for field workers. Yet for technicians and meter readers, dog encounters are a daily occupational risk that rarely makes headlines but frequently results in injuries, time off work, and lasting psychological impact.

Service Stream recognised a need to update and enhance their existing DOGSAFE training to protect their diverse field workforce. 

The company developed their DOGSAFE process almost ten years ago, a systematic approach to minimise risk when entering properties. However, many workers still did not clearly understand the protocols for assessing and managing dog-related dangers on customer properties.

The real challenge was making safety protocols memorable, instinctive, and impossible to forget when a worker is standing at a gate, deciding whether to enter.

The Strategy

We needed an approach that made safety training clear, memorable and accessible for a multilingual workforce. 

Animation provided the ability to show real situations rather than rely on dense manuals or static slides, creating stronger emotional connection through relatable scenarios. 

It also allowed the DOGSAFE steps to be embedded naturally within a narrative rather than listed as rules.

By mapping out realistic scenes across multiple properties, we could demonstrate both correct and incorrect actions in context. 

Each letter of the acronym on screen only when relevant would reinforce understanding through repetition that felt purposeful rather than forced. 

The aim was to create training workers would retain, not endure, turning dry procedural guidance into a story that genuinely sticks.

The Approach

We delivered this strategy through an 8-minute animated training experience centred on Scout the Snout, a friendly dog safety expert who made the content authoritative without being heavy-handed. 

Inspired by the clarity and warmth of shows like Bluey, the visual style kept attention while still respecting the seriousness of the subject matter.

The video placed workers directly inside realistic situations they encountered on site. 

Instead of reading instructions like checking a device for dog alerts, they watched Scout guide a character through the exact steps they would take in the field. 

Humour was used sparingly to keep the training engaging while maintaining focus on safety.

By grounding each DOGSAFE step in real-life scenarios, the animation helped ensure the protocol would come to mind instinctively when workers approached a gate and assessed whether it was safe to enter.

The Results

Following the training rollout, Service Stream saw a significant rise in dog-related incident reports. 

This did not indicate more attacks. Instead, it showed that workers were now identifying and reporting potential risks, which was exactly the behavioural shift the training was designed to achieve.

When a field worker is standing at a property gate, there is no time to reach for a handbook.

A training protocol can outline procedures, but animation helps make those procedures instinctive.

Next Steps

Got a safety protocol that needs to stick?

Whether you’re translating compliance requirements into training that actually works, creating engaging content for diverse workforces, or making critical procedures memorable enough to save lives, we’d love to help you figure it out.

Drop us a line and let’s chat about what you’re working on.