The Nature of the Beast

House Breaking
Game Play
Biology
Kept in Place
sub-dom behaviour
Basic Obediance
Basic Equipment
Basic Expression

Related
Dog Mind
Dog Play
Protocol
Basic Training
Commands
Canine sub/dom behaviour

Date of Contribution: Thu, 28 Jan 1999 12:25:26 PST
Donator: man_pup@hotmail.com
Homesite: http://24.3.14.7/wulfnj98/train.htm

There are those of us in this wide world who, for one reason or another, identify with animals. For some it's ponies, others pigs, and of course there's always dogs. In my case, well, I'm a dog.

For each of us, somewhere down in there there's an animal. It's the thing you were before you learned who you are the parts of you that had communication before language, interaction before expectations, and contact before you learned how to manipulate your reality. The animal within is the thing that existed prior to your preconceptions about people, the world, or your self. It is this animal, to some extent the 'id' in the Jungian or transpersonal sense, that some of us identify with real world animals. This binding of the inner beast with the nature and symbolism of another animal can produce a truly powerful means of expression and an entirely different way of experiencing. The inherent simplicity, the "is-ness" of any scenario, from domestic life to intense SM play, is something that defies verbal description. Communication and interaction tend to be more direct and up front. Words like "pain" and "pleasure" begin to lose their internalized meanings as one loses his ability to use human language, thus direct experience without interpretation tends to become the order of the day.

For some, simply "being treated like an animal" is the point. The slave who eats from a bowl on the floor, sleeps at the foot of the bed, is leashed & collared and forced to experience the inherent humiliation of being treated like an animal for his MASTER'S pleasure -- this is a reasonable example, depending on the context. This is not, however, what I'd like to cover here.

Some, myself included, are more interested in fully identifying with the animal - being the animal, a human dog in this case. A human dog could be defined as a person who has adopted the characteristics, identity, behavior, and so on of a real to dog to whatever extent possible within the constraints of what their mind and body will allow. The ultimate scenario would be that of a person in "dog mind" all of the time, something which probably occurs infrequently. This interpretation of dog training could to some extent be described as a given path or practice within the context of BD/SM as opposed to a scene.