The Sacred Heart of Pup Play

Pet play is not just about kink—it is about the freedom to shed control and embrace the animal self.

I’m Alexander Cheves, and this is LOVE, BEASTLY—a blog about sex, feelings, and manhood. It’s written mostly for men—gay, straight, bi, MSM, or just curious—but some readers are women, and some don’t fit into categories. Everyone’s welcome here.

This is one of my more personal essays. Heads up: these can sometimes include explicit content or emotionally triggering subjects.

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Men are dogs, so the saying goes. But I may have connected to the phrase a bit too literally as of late.

I’ve been getting into the pup scene. For those not in the know, "pup" or "puppy" play is a scene in kink in which people act like canines—they bark, roughhouse, and play in "pup mode."

I consider puphood a predominantly submissive headspace, and it seems many pups do too. Dominants in the scene can be other pups, called "alpha pups," or pup "handlers."

On Scuff a few weeks ago, I saw a handsome man on the global feed. He looked a lot like my friend Eric, Mr. Los Angeles Leather 2014 (pictured below from his pup play photoshoot with Eric Schwabel), but it wasn't him—it was his doppelgänger, a handsome handler of submissive pups.

I messaged him. At first, our kinks seemed aligned, but after some chatting, I realised we enjoyed two different versions of the pup scene.

To explain that, I’ll first clarify something. Pup play is not the same thing as bestiality—a question I've been asked more than once. "Bestiality" is the practice of humans having sex with animals, which is actually legal in Alabama. Pup play is a kink practice between two humans and does not involve any actual canines.

Pup play is a form of "pet play," one of several role-play fetish scenes that are often sexual in nature but don't explicitly have to be. Pup play is on the kink/BDSM spectrum because it involves an erotic power dynamic, a power exchange. Most sexual role-play involves people impersonating stereotypes—nurses, doctors, cops, and other fetishised professions. Pet play is where people impersonate animals (typically pets).

There are different kinds of pet play—kitty play, pony play, and more—and sex usually goes along with each of them. Pups enjoy roughhousing, licking, getting petted, getting "rewarded" for good behaviour, and getting "punished" for disobedience.

The man on Scruff was into a milder version of pup play than what I knew. Honestly, the term "pup" is more associated with what he liked than what I wanted. When I first got into the scene, my sir at the time called it "dog training." I now understand that "dog," when applied to the context of sexual role-play, defines a rougher, more intense BDSM scene, one which usually involves spanking, verbally abusive tops, hardcore sex, and more. That's the version of pup play that I was into, but I recognised that many pups and handlers, like the man I chatted with, liked something gentler—a sweet, playful scene focused on caretaking in which the puppy headspace is considered more like therapy, not a form of degradation.

But I like degradation.