Last night in the UK there was a documentary on pup play. You might have missed it as it was on a major terrestrial TV channel and extensively covered in the press. Needless to say there was also a great deal of understandable angst amongst the puppy community on twitter in the lead up and discussion afterwards.
As a result I thought I’d give my take on pup play – how I got started, what it means to me now and where I think things are headed. But before you judge me, let me be really clear lest my writing let me down: how and what you do in your personal life is totally up to you. Your kinks, how you describe and enjoy them is not for any outsider to dismiss as long as we all agree on the basic rule of consent.
The oldest picture I can find in my photo library of me engaging in pup play is from late 2003, but bear in mind digital photography wasn’t as ubiquitous as it is today so I imagine I’ve been bounding around in some form for the best part of 15 years. Now this isn’t a “I’m an old-guard dog and I know best” type attitude (see above) but I guess my longevity on the scene gives me an idea of the changes.
Pup play definitely didn’t start with me and short of a delve through the Leather Archives I can’t be exactly sure of when it did, but it’s probably been around since the beginnings of SF BDSM culture.[citation required] In general though it was mostly about the humiliation and control aspect – the handler owned a pup and used a collar and leash to control them – dragging them around to humiliate them. All the other accoutrements, like knee pads, tails etc., all followed on from this but I’d argue aren’t necessary to class yourself as a pup (or old guard-dog).
The humiliation, the fetish and the unusualness of it all is what first attracted me to it. I didn’t want to ‘socialise’ with other pups; I wanted to be kept on the floor in conditions way worse than any real dog would ever be allowed to be kept in. I did meet a few other pups back then and even went to a pup play night which wasn’t a great success as there were only two of us there.
This is where I’ve seen the scene evolve: where people pup out at home (maybe with a sexual element, maybe not) they’ll often want to socialise with like-minded people. Often they’re in closed relationships with others so rough and tumble is ok but breeding is not and donning a puppy hood affords a sense of anonymity and community (but boy am I glad to see the custom Mr S ones now, I have no idea who anyone is!).
I think it’s slightly disingenuous for the documentary to have hinted that no-one into pup play does it for the sexual thrills. Although I understand why they may have wanted to skirt around the issue the community has to understand that some people are going to use pup play as a social gathering and others get their kicks from it. This is exactly the kind of dichotomy the furries have been dealing with for years – don’t think that your way of doing things is the way that others should and we’ll all get on just super.
If you’d like some other perspectives on this, I can recommend Mr Fluffles’ post and there’s also an academic paper on the subject, but I’d really like to hear your thoughts too.
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