First Collar Training - Interaction
In a perfect world everyone would approach every instance of human pup play as a clean slate, a person devoid of hang ups. Every time they came to behave as a pup they would have no fears, no prejudices, and totally abandon pre-conceptions of what is "supposed to happen". This never happens. No matter how open minded a person is, they bring personal baggage to pup play. If you believe you don't you are delusional or simply not able to understand this paragraph and what it is about. This lesson in pup training will bring with it some hard truths, but the compassion and understanding of your Owner and Trainer will help you through.
Every person has a context to their "self". Every person exists in a place and all the complications that come with it. This place is a literal reference point of existence. You are a male, or female. You are white, or black, or yellow. You speak english or not. These are not labels, they are defining points of reference to each other. I am white, and male, and speak english for example. The "context" spoken of earlier is actually the points of reference as we relate to each other as who we are. You know I am male, my gender has a social meaning, and expectations of behaviour from our society. English has forms and expressions which lead us to think a particular way together how we view the world, and so on.
As a pup you will be moving out of the framework, the context of your life briefly. You are expecting to abandon being a human for a while. Doing that would seem to mean that you have to think like a pup. But performing as a pup is dependent on being a pup in your head, and that would require your human imagination and thinking to do. It seems you have to create a pup self, an artifice, an extra self to express through. Breathing life and sincerity, giving a soul and true expression to your new pup self has to come from somewhere though. It will derive from your human self, and it gives you a problem as the human context constantly tries to creep into play.
Resolving this dilemma is where many go wrong in human pup play. The novice guy plays with toys, sleeps in a kennel, in fact becomes almost a method actor for the role of pup. This is likely to all be fun, but over time it will become stale. Old human thinking and context will assert itself. It will take imagination, thinking, and empathy to actually get you to the pup self expressing itself naturally at any time and be a vital independent self. Pup play is the crucible where that transformation occurs.
You can be forgiven for thinking that the first thing in pup to get rid off is your clothes. Your first task is to get rid of your "context". You need to pull apart and set aside your fixed set of beliefs about yourself and the world you live in. If you can't dismantle this self, this set of prejudices and ideas and related complications you will find it hard to ever do more than pretend to be a pup.
Lose your moralising
In pup space you should not hold fixed moral views about anything. You should not be judgemental of others. A pup should look at others and ask himself why they behave as they do, not whether it is right or wrong for them to do so. What is right and wrong are subjective and depend on where you are standing at the time. For example public masturbation is ok in some tribes, yet offensive and even criminal in many cultures. The key here is for you to accept that morality is nothing more than a series of rules which apply at a particular time at a particular place under particular circumstances.
"Dogs don't have morals so why should I as a pup" may be an alluring approach to the topic, but beware simply trying to ape canine behaviour. You can't just throw off the human context and drop to all fours and lose morals and prejudices and fears by copying what dogs do. Losing your judging of others as right or wrong means you don't use the morality you have been using as a human. You must abandon it and embrace your pup experience.
Does this mean you should murder, rape, and go on a looting rampage once in pup mode? Does being in pup mode allow you to just throw off all moral constraint and be a total arsehole? The answer is a no. Being a pup certainly doesn't legitimise behaviour that will harm others and yourself, nor does it make those actions of violence reasonable or acceptable. These extreme behaviours belong to the extremes of human experience, and are outside the practice of human pup play. The key mentioned above did not say to have no morals whatsoever. It said to accept that your human morals are relative to the situation and circumstance you are in. As a pup you will engage in an exchange with your Owner and Trainer, with other pups, even with strangers. The important thing to note is that you will think during that exchange from a non-moralising point of view. SCT Exchange details how exactly the exchange with others works. It also places responsibility for actions on the pup and brings consequences of actions to the fore of pup play.
It takes training and effort to be and feel free to be your pup self. You should do this activity every time you undress for pup play. Establish a practice you can think off as you shed your clothes to enter pup training. Take a breath and focus on the action of dismantling your context, of abandoning your human self as you abandon human clothes. Let it become associated in your mind. You need to try and develop as open and non judging mind as you can.
