What is Pet Play? To ARF! ARF! ARF! and Beyond!
If you’re interested in BDSM, you’ve likely heard of or seen pet play. So what is pet play? How does pet play work? How do you perform pet play? Do you want to be a domesticated animal? Do you want to be a sexy kitten? A loyal puppy? A fierce guardian wolf?
Pet play is a very popular form of play within BDSM. It’s a form of roleplay where one or more participants takes on the role or aspects of an animal. Often another participant will take on the role of handler/owner. Being primarily role play, it’s very accessible for everyone. While some people love their cages and leather puppy masks, no special equipment is required to get started. Pet play can be very stern and disciplinarian but more often it’s playful and light-hearted (though that should not be taken to suggest that participants don’t take it seriously). It’s also popular because it provides unique ways for the participants to express themselves.
Some popular forms of pet play include:
Puppy play
Kitten play
Pony play
As with most things in BDSM, there are many different ways to perform Pet Play. What form it takes will strongly depend on the participants and their own personal preferences. Typically, it involves some form of animal roleplay and/or accessories. Common features of pet play include:
Collars and leashes (or bridles and bits for pony play)
Animal accessories like ears or a tail.
Animal masks such as leather pup or pony masks.
Full animal suits.
Dog crates/cages (even if your particular form of pet play isn’t puppy play, crates sized for a large dog are often about the right size for a person).
Carriages or carts for pony play.
Pet play also easily lends itself to other forms of BDSM play:
Breath play using the collar/leash.
Anal play using butt plugs with tails attached.
D/s or M/s (usually with the pet as the s-type and handler/owner as the D-type).
A nurturing dynamic (picture a real relationship between owners and pets where the pet has everything provided for them).
Humiliation play (being forced to pull a cart, getting walked around on a leash, being forced to eat/drink out of an animal bowl).
Forced exercise activities by taking the pet for a walk/run (note you can take your pet for a walk without a bridle or leash depending on your comfort level and the environment).
Discipline/obedience training.
Brat play/disobedient pet.
Bondage involving cages, puppy mitts, harnesses, leashes, etc.
Pet play can be incorporated into aftercare using cages (if set up as a comfortable safe space for the pet), head pats, lots of “good pet” affirmations, treats, etc.
Pet Play is primarily about your headspace
Of course, the most important aspect of Pet Play isn’t a matter of what physical accessories you have available. As with most forms of BDSM it’s primarily about your headspace.
So how does one go about pet play? Well however you want, of course. Actually, however you and whomever else is involved in the scene wants, or at least however it was negotiated. As with most things BDSM, there’s no right or wrong way so long as everyone is on board with it. As long as you feel comfortable and you feel that you are somehow acting as or channeling an animal/pet, you’re doing it! But of course, there are some considerations:
What type of animal do you want to be? Do you have a specific animal that you personify? Maybe it’s something more vague like just being an unspecified type of domesticated pet. Maybe your “pet” animal is more wild, like a wolf. Maybe your animal changes from time to time. It’s ok to have multiple pet personas. It’s also ok for your animal to be a hybrid or entirely fictional.
How do you become that pet? For some people, it’s a roleplay thing that applies at certain specified times. For others, it’s a full-time role, an expression of their inner selves. You might be in full costume, you might wear cat ears and a tail, you might have a cage that you sleep in with a bowl and a little gerbil waterer filled with whiskey, you might howl at the moon every night, or you might just take on some animal/pet-like mannerisms in your interactions with your partner.
What do you want out of pet play? Is it sexy roleplay? Is it a form of nonverbal expression of your inner self? Do you like the idea of being a domesticated animal with an owner that takes care of you and provides for you? Does it help you get into primal play?
Make sure you negotiate and communicate your pet-ness. If you simply say you’re into kitten play, your partner might think that means you like to wear sexy ears and get on all fours but to you it might actually mean ignoring their commands and knocking things off the table.
I’ll also share my own experiences with pet play. At first, Domina Chase and I joked that we don’t do pet play. And we didn’t—until we did. It started just as a convenient label for out M/s dynamic. We needed new labels to mark this change from D/s so I became Pet and she became Owner. Pretty soon we were leaning into that dynamic (and it helps that the collar and leash featured very prominently in our play already).
At first, I didn’t feel like any particular animal. Over time, I started taking on a lot of puppy mannerisms, which fit with our overall dynamic. We don’t do brat play so as her sub/slave I was expected to be obedient to DC. I also see myself as a protector/guardian of my Owner. Being a puppy really fit the bill. But sometimes being puppy wasn’t enough so I would become a dragon to take care of my Flying Llama (yes I’m a puppy dragon and she’s a llama, but that’s a story for another time).
Pet play became a construct that was very useful for framing our relationship:
Pet/Owner was a very fitting way to frame the way we work together.
Telling me what animal I need to be can be a way to either put me in a particular headspace or to tell me what DC needs from me. I’m a puppy when I’m being whimsical and playful or need to be taken care of. I can be a dragon when things are tough or when DC is signaling to me that she’s having a hard time and needs me to take care of her. Most days I’m either a puppy dragon or a dragon puppy (yes there is a difference).
Although I don’t have a physical cage, references to going into the cage become good metaphors when I need to be taken care of. DC will ask me to hop into the cage and then depending on the severity of the situation she might take me to a meadow or into a cave, she can throw a blanket over the top if needed, and as things calm down she will ask questions like if the blanket should be on the cage or off. She’ll offer to leave the door to the cage open and leave it up to me when to come out. These things offer ways to deal with difficult situations through an imaginary world.
Likewise, when DC is upset, I can take her into the cave and wrap her up in my dragon tail (we also have an actual plush dragon tail that she can cuddle in real life). Then I guard the entrance and burn the ever-living shit out of any bad things that try to get her.
Sometimes when I get upset I go non-verbal. At times I might mostly just nod or shake my head but it’s also easier to arf, growl, or whimper than it is to talk sometimes.
Although I don’t get bratty, my little puppy heart can be playful at times. But just like we often say my dog is “essentially a good boy” (as in he doesn’t set out to do anything bad but he is sometimes hyper and impulsive which leads to bad decisions), as an essentially good Pet, we recognize that sometimes I will make mistakes but never because of any intention to do bad things.
That about wraps things up. I could spend pages writing in detail about things you do as or to each individual animal but as with most articles, this is more about giving you the tools to forge your own way and develop your unique style of play.
Do you have an inner BDSM animal? How do you channel your inner pet? Or how do you handle your pet partner? Tell us in the comments below or continue the discussion in our Facebook group Humanistic BDSM: Inclusive AF Kink!
Image credit: Photo courtesy of Joped, downloaded from Wikimedia Commons and shared under the cc-by-sa-2.0 license.
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