Erin Hunter
"HarperCollins", publisher of the "Survivors" series, first suggested that the Erin Hunter team write a book series about dogs, but Victoria Holmes, a member of the team, was reluctant to create stories that would be too close to "Warriors", the biggest series published under the Erin Hunter name. It was instead decided that the new series would be about bears, which became the "Seekers" series. In an interview two years later, Holmes said that, though she was "happy to focus on cats and bears right now", she would consider doing a series about dogs in the future. Gilian Philip, a former member of the Hunter team, later said that "dogs just felt like a natural progression from cats".