After Crimby graduated from college in West Virginia a few years ago, he moved to Pittsburgh and started a job at the Andy Warhol Museum. While it was common for groups of people to come into the museum in various costumes, none of them captured his attention quite like the group of pet players that came in during one of his shifts.
Over a Zoom call, he tells me about that day with the same excitement he had then. “When I saw them, I just felt like they had this aura. Like, ‘I’m doing my thing, and I don’t really care what you think because we all share this world, and I’m going to enjoy my piece of it,’” he says. “I just got obsessed with it at that point.”
Shortly after that, the pandemic hit, and he had a year off work to think about how to enter the pet play community that he now considers home. He settled on his name and decided that, within his play, he would become a Husky.
For the unfamiliar, pet play is a form of kink roleplay that is typically practiced within a BDSM context. It has roots in gay leather culture but is rapidly expanding and becoming more inclusive. Humans dress as pets (commonly as “pups,” but also as other animals) and often enter dominant/submissive relationships with a “handler.” Like all subcultures, pet players come to the community with varying interests and motivations. For some pups, their pet play is an extension of their sexuality; for others, it is separate.
Pup Starry, who plays an American Shepherd Corgi mix, tells me over Zoom, “For me, it’s just getting on all fours and being in a very primal and raw state.” But he is quick to add, “If you ask 100 pups or pets what pet play is, expect to get a hundred different answers because it’s different for every pet.”
whiskey, who identifies as a fox within the Pittsburgh pet scene, tells me, “Pet play, for me, is about allowing myself to be silly. We are all adults, and so we know that acting like animals is a very silly, nonsensical, whimsical thing.” While they like the wildness of pet play and aren’t as interested in being controlled by a handler, they see the handlers as having an important role in creating the conditions for this play. “A handler’s role is to allow and guide pets in the space to shed their humanness for a couple of hours,” they say. “To just be a more feral, silly, fun, cute creature.”
While 100 different definitions are possible, shedding humanness does seem to be a common theme among the people I interviewed. Asami, who coordinates one of the local pet play groups Paws and Claws, tells me, “One of the primary goals of this type of play is to be able to drop away some of your humanness, responsibilities, and worries, and be carefree, open, and honest.”
Crimby agrees, adding that this is one of the best parts of the pet play. “You get down into the head space and you can peel off the onion layers of the world that suck,” he says. “I don’t care about my power bill when I’m dressed like a dog. I’m just like, ‘Oh look, a bird!’”
Lt. Mittens, who has been into pet play for 19 years and identifies as transgender and autistic, says that shredding this humanness is akin to being able to stop masking (a term used by neurodivergent people to mean hiding autism or ADHD to avoid stigma). At 6’2” in her human form, she started to identify as a Great Dane in her play. “As a pup, I don’t worry about masking or any of those things that come with, just, day-to-day life,” she says. “So that has been a really great experience for me; it just changed me, you know?” She also points out that being in pup space allows her to communicate non-verbally, which is a relief.
It makes sense that this play would be effective in helping to shed human concerns. While there are various ways to engage, at the level of community, romps — the events where pets come together to play and interact — embody playfulness, joy, and fun. Of a romp that Crimby and Asami used to co-host together in Pittsburgh, Crimby says, “You look in one corner and there’d be a bunch of people just playing around with toys. You would look in another and there’s a group of people wrestling. And you look in another one and there’d be a couple cuddled up together on a mat on the floor.” In other words, the romp is an accepting space for all the pets to come and find the activities that best suit their desires and moods.
It would be wrong, though, to assume that pet players are only focused on escapism. Part of what they are doing, as pets and as a community, is resisting and re-imagining the world we live in: the human world. These efforts extend beyond the romp. whiskey’s interest in kink communities grew in connection to the anti-racist social justice work they were doing. “I started in social justice and political organizing and pivoted once I found my niche in kink and in the overall sexual and general health of marginalized communities,” they say. “I work to create spaces for all; that includes femmes, disabled queer folks, trans folks, fat folks. My specific work is about ensuring that these people feel seen, safe, and heard and that they allow themselves to feel pleasure in a world that’s actively trying to destroy them at every turn.”
Crimby and Asami, who are both now on the board at Steel City Pups — a local organization for pups and handlers (PAH) that started in 2019 — are also actively working to create more diversity within the community. Crimby says, “We have done a good job of bringing in people who are gender neutral, trans, AFAB.” He says this is something that they have had to work hard to do given pup play’s origin in the gay male leather community.
With greater gender diversity also comes more diversity of other kinds, including body diversity. “We want people to know that everyone can be in this community. You don’t have to be some super ripped, conventionally attractive guy to be a part of this,” Crimby says. “I weigh almost 300 pounds and they love me to death.” Case in point, Crimby is the reigning Iron City Pup — a title given as part of a Pittsburgh Leather Pride competition.
The amazing thing about the Pittsburgh pup community is that it is robust enough to include folks from all walks of life. Steel City Pups maintains much of its gay leather culture while also opening space for others. And Paws and Claws — a Pittsburgh-based petplay group run by Asami — has an active rotation of munches, romps, classes, and social activities.
Lt. Mittens says, “I’ve competed in the Iron City Pup competition, and I go out to a lot of the pound puppy social events, which are the last Thursday of the month at Brewers Hotel and Bar”. There is a lot to do, and it’s a good time.”
Not only is it a good time, but it is a place to call home for many people who haven’t found that in other places. Lt. Mittens comments, “You gain packs with people, it’s another kind of bond and it’s special.” She goes on, “Being trans and on the spectrum, I grew up alone. So, finding this community in Pittsburgh where I can just be weird with these people is such a good thing to have in my life.”
Crimby echoes this sentiment. “Everyone has become my family. I’ve never had this kind of belonging. I have fallen in love with it; this is my family now.” This seems particularly true here in Pittsburgh. He says, “A bunch of us have checked out pup play across the country and have gone to international competitions, and we can say that there is no other city in the country that has what we have here in Pittsburgh. Everyone talks about their city having community, and we have that, too, but what we also have is family.”
