We had an amazing opportunity last weekend. One of local sex clubs, the Pleasure Garden Club (PGC), has a BDSM/kink-forward night the first Friday of every month, a little event call Pleasurecation Party. PGC is kink-friendly all the time, and their BDSM furniture is always out for use; they even have a St. Andrew’s Cross in one of the playrooms. But the Pleasurecation Party brings the kinksters out in droves. And last week, the party theme was the Westminster Human Show, an obvious play on the Westminster Dog Show, which happened just this past week. I think.
This was the first human show Erin and I had ever attended. “What’s a human show?” you ask. Instead of a handler presenting a dog for judges as what happens at a dog show, at a human show a handler presents a human…who in this case was dressed as a dog or cat.
Here’s the TL;DR recap of the evening: I found it fascinating. Erin thought it was boring/repetitive. Neither of us thought it was sexy. And overall, we felt the event suffered from a general lack of organization. I doubt I would go to another such event unless I knew it was better organized, but I also wouldn’t warn people off from attending such a show themselves.
And now the Too Long But Did Read version.
Pet Play
In some cases, puppy or kitten play is a form of Dom/sub interaction. The pet can be obedient and follow direction or disobedient and require disciplining. But it’s not always a domination thing. Far be it for me to try to explain other people’s things. Watch this video for more info:
I was excited to see the Westminster Human Show because I like seeing people enjoy their kinks. Even if that kink does nothing for me. I’ve been turned on by watching people genuinely indulge in sex acts that would normally not arouse me.
Erin’s similar, but to a lesser extent, I think. Or maybe it’s more correct to say that at some point things are so far out there she can’t find them sexy even if someone else is enjoying it. She has nothing against anyone enjoying their Thing, but she’s not interested in seeing it.
That night, she saw too much.
Reviewing the Westminster Human Show
Although I will say a little about the contestants in the show, my plan is not to review their performances. Instead, I’m going to talk about the show in general with some specific examples thrown in.
The show had an emcee as well as four judges. We have said before that while we like Pleasurecation Parties, it’s been hard to hear the presenters they bring in. Well, PGC fixed that it seems. No longer was the side room filled with the dance music, and the emcee and judges had their own mics. Unfortunately, the emcee’s mic wasn’t very good—he was using a thin Bob Barker The Price Is Right-style thing for effect—so we couldn’t hear him. This was another point against the show for Erin: She couldn’t hear any of the announcements so had little idea what was going on.
We discovered later that the normal mic the judges had worked perfectly. Alas that the emcee didn’t switch to it much earlier in the night.
There were five categories to the overall event: talent, dance, agility course, fetch, and foot race (I’m only mostly sure of that order). I believe awards were given for each event, but I can’t say for sure because we missed whatever award ceremony there might have been. The event took place in a side room, and often no announcements are made in the club proper regarding side-room shows. Either that or the award ceremony happened hours after the event ended, and we’d already left for the night.
The Contestants: Dogs and Cats Living Together. Mass Hysteria!
I feel as though there was no pre-event sign-up to compete in the Westminster Human Show, which meant all the contestants were just whomever showed up and wanted to jump in. That could be a fine system for something that wasn’t a multipart contest.
After all, there were many more people dressed as animals at PGC than what participated in the actual Westminster Human Show. Certainly some were just dressing to the theme with no intention of ever prancing about acting like an animal. But if it were just a kind of “parade about and show off your outfit” event, more people/animals would have participated. And it would have been over quickly.
What we had was a random group of maybe ten contestants (split pretty evenly between dogs and cats) who performed during the five categories. Except that some contestants who did the early events didn’t return for later ones (they were off partying in the club proper), and new contestants jumped in for later events.
It felt disjointed.
I would have loved if there was preplanning enough to have, say, five dogs and five cats signed up for the event. Each given a number. With their pet names on a sheet so we could actually follow along with who was whom. Maybe even have the sheet designed so the audience could score each contestant for each category.
Preshow
The night did not start out well in Erin’s favor. Not that the experience I’m about to relay was awesome for me, but I have a much higher tolerance for…well, everything. Except shopping. I hate shopping.
Intrigued now, aren’t ya?
OK, so, within five minutes of entering the club, we headed back to the bar to deposit our alcohol with the bartender. And standing there at the bar is an older gentleman (I’m going to guess late 50s, maybe up to mid-60s) in a BDSM dog mask, a leather harness across his chest, and a butt-plug dog tail. And nothing else.
Now me, I’m impressed with anyone wearing a butt plug for an extended time. I’m fond of the tail plugs like that, too. For women. Seeing a guy with one does nothing for me. But as a reminder, Erin still has a hard time seeing butt stuff as very sexy. The idea of anyone walking around with a plug in all night has less sexiness and more “ouch!” to her. Even if it were a particularly sexy individual with a butt-plug tail, she’d have thought it a little cringy.
It was a jarring way to start off the night, having no build up to the butt-plug tail.
We saw some other contestants out and about. Most of them wore lingerie with dog or cat ears. Like a typical swinger Halloween costume. There were a couple other guys in dog masks, one with a full body leather harness with tail attached to harness and the other in a sort of white jumpsuit. No one else went with a butt-plug tail.
Talent
The first round was the talent show. Contestants took that to mean different things. One dog-girl (I think the only female dog) did a wonderful performance, sometimes doing as told (sit, stay, speak). Other times she was less well behaved and needed to be tossed a treat. Her “play dead” was exceptional: a full-on theatrical hand-to-forehead faint away!
One cat was purr-fect (you knew that pun was coming at some point, right?) in that she ignored everything she was told.
Another cat sang a Disney song, and spectacularly! But using human words during the show was against the rules, and she was admonished for it.
Overall, the talent portion was the most enjoyable. Some animals were “well trained” and did a routine. Others simply misbehaved or didn’t listen.
The butt-plug tail doggy? His talent was taking a beating. His handler, a younger, pretty Domme, brought him up to the judges’ table and just started whipping the crap out of him with her riding crop. Hard.
So hard his tail came out.
And he nearly left it there when she led him out. The judges had to call him back to get it.
It was a little much without the auspice of this being a hardcore S&M event. Another negative moment for Erin.
Interestingly, butt-plug tail dog didn’t compete in any other events nor did I see him or his handler the rest of the night. I wonder if his tail coming out was on a level of bad behavior that his handler had to escort him home immediately for truly severe punishment.
And it’s exactly things like that that make this so fascinating to me! I really want to know what happened!
Dance
The dance event felt redundant. Not every animal did a dance in the talent show portion, but some did things that were similar, like a cat rising up to bat at a ribbon toy. Some of the music choices were humorous—Who Let the Dogs Out?—but none of the routines seemed preplanned, which is exactly why they felt similar to the talent show.
Due to the repetitious feel of the performance, this is where Erin started to get bored. She doesn’t have a high endurance for things that seem similar. Take most action movies: If there is more than one car chase or fight scene, she gets bored. Or if one of these goes on too long. “We’ve already seen this,” she’ll say with a long-suffering sigh.
Which is exactly what happened here.
She also asked if I was enjoying it. I told her that I enjoyed watching people in lingerie dance no matter if they were dancing as humans or dancing as animals. Not necessarily arousing but fun to watch.
This also started a weird trend of, when all the contestants did their performance, the emcee opened the floor to anyone who wanted to do a dance even if they weren’t in pet costumes.
This could have been an attempt to be inclusive, but it sounded like a plea to increase participation. Which wasn’t necessary as the show was long enough. In fact, too long. There was no need to try to extend things by adding performers. Particularly nonpet performers.
Fortunately no one took him up on the offer, this or any other time he asked. Which was at the end of every category from here on out.
Agility Course
The course involved crawling through a long pipe, going around some cones, over a chain on the ground, and then under some sort of stick thing. I think. It was hard to see from my seat.
I enjoyed this one as it allowed the animals to once again either be obedient and try their best— occasionally with some prompting or instruction from their handlers—or just going about and doing their own thing…like one dog who went around humping legs. Again.
Fetch/Play
During this event, dogs were tossed frisbees or a big shaggy pillow shaped like a bone, which they retrieved. Cats batted at a large ball of yarn on a stick.
This one was redundant with the talent show and dance. We’d already seen a lot of dogs either being obedient or not and cats batting at things.
Foot Race
Contestants ran a lap around the room. It was enjoyable in the same way any sort of sporting event involving women in sexy attire or flat-out lingerie is fun. And there was an added excited akin to what people must enjoy about watching demolition derbies: I was on tenterhooks to see if any of the cats in high-heel platform shoes were going to wipe out while running around the curves. And if they did, how many people in the audience they would take out with them.
Fortunately, none did.
Some contestants took it seriously and ran as all-out as they could in their gear. Some dogs got distracted (one chased his tail and I think the other one stopped to hump some legs. Again.). One cat just pranced.
It seemed like an odd choice of events especially given the attire more of them wore. Also, several animals had been very committed to staying on “four legs” (hands and knees or hands and feet) through the competition but most stood upright for this last event.
Final Thoughts About the Westminster Human Show
I think the overall event could be improved with a little more fore-planning and a fewer categories.
Maybe start with a display category in which the pet is walked around the room by the handler so everyone has a chance to see and “meet” the contestant. But not like hands-on petting the contestant. More like a biographical moment: “This is Roxy and her handler Chaz.” If the pet has a particular breed they want to represent, say it. If the handler wants to note the cat is a brat (in a hat), have the emcee read it off the card.
Then the talent event and the agility course. Done. Keep it simple and short. The Westminster Human Show took over the room dedicated to kink-activity. People were raring for it to be over to get down to spanking, flogging, and suspension play.
About Pet Play in General
As I said, I’m fascinated by the people who want to do this. It’s not my thing, but I kind of get it. Girl on the Net has said a few times on the Sexpots podcast that she likes the submissive role because she doesn’t need to make choices or decisions. She can completely disassociate from her and just be “nothing” in the moment.
Please forgive me, G, if I’m screwing up your intent. Not that I think you’ll ever read this.
Her description makes me think of this sub-space as a kind of ego death. A sub can put their personality aside and just…be. Or not be.
I can appreciate that. It’s like in Total Recall where the sales guy says to Arnold Schwarzenegger, “What is it that is exactly the same about every single vacation you have ever taken? …. You!”
Wouldn’t it be grand to be able to not be me for a while and be a cat or a dog or some other beloved pet? Especially a cat in my house. Jeez! These furry freeloaders live in the lap of luxury!
I actually have one sleeping in my lap at the moment.
Left With a Burning Curiosity
I would love to know more about this from people in the pet-play lifestyle. How do they start their pet play? How often? What does a typical session look like? What do they feel they get out of it? How long does it last…or is it all the time? What do the handler’s get out of it?
The Westminster Human Show did nothing to answer any of these questions because I never took a moment to interact with the contestants after the show. My own fault, of course, for not seeking them out. I certainly don’t think that should be part of the show!
I enjoyed the show because I got to experience something new, something that I don’t understand. But I would like to know more. Not with any thought I would ever want to take this up from either the pet side nor the handler side.
But I’m a writer. I like stories. And I like getting to know other people’s stories.
So for anyone reading this who is into that scene, feel free to reach out. I’d love to hear more.