Chirp! Bark! Hey!

Dogs As Narrative, Through The Lens Of Abuse Recovery

Written by Jude Rook-Machina on March 4th, 2024.

J: so I got into the Archetropers’ Guild discord server, saw a prompt, and immediately started writing answers because wow talking about myself is fun, I need to do that more? definitely a more informal essay than the last one, I really just copied it from discord!

Content Warning: mentions of past abuse, but it’s pretty vague and has a hopeful swing to it!

I identify with dogs, as a dog, in the metaphorical sense of like - a dog as shorthand for a beloved tool? Being a bad actor's attack dog, being used and abused, biting the hand that fed and hit you. Dogs in the way they're used in vent art, as a metaphor for loving and trusting the wrong person.

But I also identify with dogs as beloved companions, as sweet and loyal and playful and loved. I know people who adore their dogs even if they came from horrible circumstances and have bad habits from abuse, and like - it's a narrative identity for me, something that ties together very different parts of my life, the before and after.

Like, yeah okay, I'm a dog. I unquestioningly love and trust people I care about. Of course an abuser took advantage of me, I didn't know better, and she promised to love me but she wouldn't even comfort me when I was scared of the rain. But also, there are way more people in the world who love me and want me to be happy, and that's good to remember as I recover and heal and grow! Calling myself a dog means accepting the way I adore people as a neutral to positive trait, instead of becoming a paranoid mess who refuses to be vulnerable again.

I don't know how much it's a species thing, because whenever I try to picture myself as a dog it's more like the shadow of a dog, pricked ears and bushy tail and all black, no detailing. I feel Wrong about picturing myself as a more realistic dog, instead of an artistic rendering of a black dog - like for dog photography to Resonate with me, it cannot be someone's candid pics of their pet German shepherd rolling around, it has to have some kind of message intended for use, otherwise it's like. That's a normal dog! I do not identify with you, normal dog, you're very cute but that's it. You’re unrelated to my life narrative!

And I don't generally feel the need to introduce myself to people as a dog when new people hear about me, because that feels like it's more personal? Like hey, I’m a dog, you wanna know why? It's The Traumas! I’m open enough about it, but I don’t want to be pushed into thinking about it, and sometimes alterhuman spaces grill you about the origin of your identity too much for my comfort? I’m talking about it now because I want to, not because I’m being pressured into sharing.

I say all that, but I do really like cultivating my doggish traits, because they're kind of just things I like already - exercise, chewing and biting as a stim, play-fighting, getting scritched, curling up in a little ball to sleep. And sometimes I like giving myself phantom ears or tail or fangs for the expressiveness of them. I feel perfectly complete without them, but I like having them sometimes! They're fun!

And I don’t know if it just has to be an archetrope? I can describe it in other ways! Poppy (@aestherians) coined a term on rair website, here, about something being an alterhuman simile if you relate to it so strongly because it reflects your lived experiences, and I think I could call dogs my simile just as naturally as calling them my archetrope. It's a useful word and I haven't seen it around much!

Addition (May 31st, 2025): I actually have some more thoughts on this! Mainly, the distinction between my identity as a concept and the identity of many other dogs, especially therians, as animals.

You know how I said before that I don't know how much it's a species thing? Well, I can say for sure now! It is not a species thing!

I'm not a dog in the way of being a nonhuman animal, a dog that's a living thing with the instincts that come with it. I don't get the dog urge to emote with ears and tail as natural body language, I don't bark or whine or growl, I don't want to chase a squirrel or be fed kibble or wear a collar.

I'm a dog in a different way - I'm dog as metaphor, dog as symbolism, dog as a human concept, dog as a role in a story. It's a fictomere to me, a part of me that's fictional. It's archetropal, where I resonate with the narrative of dogs in fiction in a way that's nonbinary to the "identify as" vs. "identify with" binary - at some point relating to dogs turned around into becoming one, being the concept of the dog in thematic strokes.

"Keep your dog on a leash," words to spit at someone who has a person who's too loyal to them, too willing to be violent and follow orders, degrading and disgusted and dehumanizing. "Good dog," words of praise murmured by a partner who compares them to a dog in their submission and loves them for it all the same. I'm like that kind of dog, the point of comparison, the picture that those words paint about someone's humanity.

If I'm to be an animal, I'm a fundamentally human animal, not a canid animal.