Meet the men who want to dress and be treated like dogs

A new TV show looks at the "puppy play" subculture.

Jordan Gold

Meet the men who want to dress and be treated like dogs

“A tiny bit of me regrets being a puppy because I lost what I had.”

A secretive subculture of men who dress and behave like dogs – sometimes called “puppy play” – is enjoyed by roughly 10,000 people in the UK.

This week Channel 4 is diving head-first into the bizarre world of these “human pups”.

Airing tomorrow night (Wednesday), The Secret Life Of Human Pups will attempt to understand the unique world of the people who live as dogs and those who “own” them as they bring their role-play fantasies to life.

Human puppy play has become a global phenomenon in recent years. Explaining the trend, one puppy says that it is “more than just grown men coveting doggy treats, belly rubs, squeaky toys and thousand pound latex suits”.

It doesn’t just extend to dogs either. As Kye, a 28-year-old graduate from Oxford, says: “Females who are into pet play are usually into kitten play as they identify more with kittens than pups.”

During the programme, we meet Tom, an aspiring canine who has spent more than £4,000 over the past 10 years on his hobby. Tom – or Spot, as he prefers to be called – was crowned Mr Puppy UK in a fierce competition back in November.

Spot is ~owned~ by Colin, a younger man whose Twitter profile describes him as being into “Lycra, Gunge, Pup Play, BDSM.” But his dual identities as Spot and Tom eventually became too much to manage.

Channel 4

At one candid moment in the film he says that his girlfriend Rachel “thought I was becoming gay”, adding: “A tiny bit of me regrets being a puppy, because I lost what I had.”

As Spot explains:

“You disappear, you start chasing puppy toys and people give you ear scratches and treat you like a puppy.

You disappear so much into the head space that you don’t stop to think but you crave it and you want it and you wish for it. It’s magic, it just really is genuinely magic.”