What People Get Wrong About Pup Play

What People Get Wrong About Pup Play

One of the most common reactions when someone learns I am a pup is confusion. Sometimes it is curiosity. Sometimes it is a raised eyebrow followed by the inevitable question.

“So… what exactly is that?”

Over the past year I have realized that question usually is not really about pup play. It is about assumptions.

Recently I had a version of that conversation with my mom.

It was not a long explanation or a detailed lesson about pup play. In fact, I did not really try to explain the mechanics of it at all. Instead I told her something much simpler and much more important.

I told her I was safe.
I told her I felt secure.
And most importantly, I told her I was happy. Happier than I have been in a long time.

That last part mattered to me. Because the truth is that the past couple of years have involved a lot of rebuilding. Coming out of a long marriage, rediscovering parts of myself, and figuring out what life actually looks like when you stop trying to squeeze yourself into boxes that no longer fit.

Therapy has been part of that process. Some weeks it feels like steady progress. Other weeks it feels like opening a drawer in your brain that has been jammed shut for years and discovering a bunch of things inside that you probably should have looked at sooner.

One of the things therapy keeps bringing me back to is how much energy it takes to hide parts of yourself.

For a long time my life existed in separate boxes. Work lived in one box. Family in another. Community somewhere else entirely. Pup play lived quietly in that third box. Something I loved, but something I did not necessarily talk about with people outside the community.

But the more work I have done on myself this year, the more those walls have started to feel unnecessary.

Because rediscovering pup play, and rediscovering Ruff, brought something back into my life that I had been missing.

Joy.

Also zoomies. Definitely zoomies.

It also brought people.

Friends who celebrate each other’s weirdness. Pups who show up for each other when life gets difficult. A community that understands the value of playfulness in a world that often takes itself far too seriously.

I told my mom about Kuma too. Kuma is my Alpha pup in London. Our relationship is long distance and part of a polyamorous dynamic. From the outside that probably sounds complicated. From the inside it feels surprisingly grounded. What mattered most to me was helping her understand that the relationship is built on care, trust, and mutual respect.

She listened. She asked a few questions. Then the conversation moved on the way family conversations do. We talked about other things.

The world did not end. Nobody burst into flames. The dog did not judge me.

But something inside me shifted.

For the first time I felt like I was not hiding an important part of my life from someone who mattered to me.

That shift showed up in other ways this week too.

At a gear swap event in Atlanta something unexpected happened. A couple of pups I had never met walked up and greeted me by name.

“Hey Ruff. I have seen you online.”

That kind of moment sticks with you. Not because of ego. Honestly it mostly made me a little emotional. Because it meant that something I had shared had reached someone else.

Visibility creates connection.

The biggest misconception about pup play is that it is purely sexual.

For some pups sexuality can be part of it. But reducing the entire culture to that misses most of what actually makes the community meaningful. Pup spaces are also full of creativity. Art. Humor. Storytelling. Music that somehow captures the exact emotional frequency of pup headspace.

Recently I discovered the work of a UK pup musician named Pup Xander whose music really resonated with me. I reached out simply to say thank you and to ask permission to use one of his tracks in something I am preparing for later this year. It felt important to ask first. Creative work deserves respect and our community is small enough that those connections matter.

When he said he would be honored I felt relieved. Getting that permission mattered to me.

What followed turned into one of those delightfully wandering conversations that happen when two pups start chatting online. We talked about travel, music, and places in northern England. It turned out we had both visited Castlerigg, a stone circle in the Lake District that sits quietly among the hills and somehow manages to feel both ancient and alive at the same time.

He also shared a little about his life behind the music. Navigating chronic fatigue. Anxiety. Continuing to create art for the pup community simply because he believes it brings people joy.

That exchange stuck with me.

It is a side of pup culture people outside the community rarely see.

Pup play is not just gear and nightlife. It is creativity. Encouragement. Collaboration. It is artists making music for a community that understands it. It is pups reaching across cities and countries just to say, “What you are making matters.”

Sometimes that connection happens in person at a bar or event. Sometimes it happens across the internet between two pups on opposite sides of the Atlantic.

Either way those moments matter.

Therapy has taught me something else this year too. Authenticity rarely arrives all at once. It happens in small steps. A conversation with your mom. A moment of recognition at an event. A message sent across the ocean thanking someone for their art.

Each of those moments chips away at the old instinct to hide.

And the more visible pup culture becomes the more people start to realize something important.

We are not pretending to be something we are not.

We are simply allowing ourselves to be fully, authentically who we are.

For me that means living, teaching, occasionally causing a little chaos, and yes, sometimes barking.

#UnapologeticallyPuppy