This is what is truly important to help make our community a safe and healthy space. Please remember there are many ways to convey your pup/dog interest that even if none of the current or available pup/Dog logo designs work for you, find something that does. But it still makes me smile to see the red bone symbol being used and widely identified, accepted as a pup symbol. In the end what matters to me the most is find out who you are and how you convey yourself, your pup/dog soul or Handler/Trainer skills. Now in more recent years it has been redesigned by having the stripes go sideways with new interpretations. I admit I have never really pushed the leather pup/Dog pride symbol I had created to be universally accepted but overtime it seems it is being embraced. In the beginning they copyrighted it for me to help protect it from being misused and helped me get it made into a 3’x5′ fabric flag, leather armband, a few embroidered t-shirts and eventually I had pins made. My friends at Leather Creations where I worked at the time when I created the concept encouraged me to pursue getting it out to the public. Initially only a few friends knew about my leather dog pride design but little by little people saw the design and remarked that they liked it.
I also always liked Tony DeBlase’s description regarding the colors he choose “I will leave it to the viewer to interpret the colors and symbols.” Now I had a symbol I could identify with as a leather dog that did not discriminate based on a dog breed and that would be visually translatable around the world. So I took out the red heart and added a red dog bone to the center of the leather pride colors. So I thought what simple symbol would be universally recognized around the world that is associated with dogs? Then it became obvious, a dog bone. And I didn’t want to use a paw as the bear community already had been using that particular image as their symbol representation. I tried to imagine another dog head but each one was too defining to a particular breed and there was no generic all encompassing dog head I could think of. The main thing I did not like about it was the dog head looked like a Dobermans head and I did not identify myself as a Doberman.
Over a decade ago I had come across a design with a red dog head on the leather pride colors but something did not feel right about it. So it was natural for me to embrace the leather pride flag that Tony DeBlase created as a symbol I could relate to in the beginning when it first came out and even more so over the decades.īut even though I identified with the leather pride flag it still was missing something, a complete representation of myself. I never really identified as a bear (even though I am very hairy) or as a member of the Imperial Court system (even though I worked/volunteered with them) or as a pan-sexual (even though I belonged to many groups/friends) or any of the other organizations I belonged to that have come and gone since but as a gay leather man and finally over time as a gay leather Dog. Growing up I always had a pup (Dog) soul. Over 25+ years ago when I started exploring my pup journey my first experience in identifying myself was as a gay leather man in my early childhood. I am going to throw a little history lesson into this pup pride flag discussion: ~ Original note from Kirk “Brue” Pierce, the original designer to the Pup Bone pride flag.
Gaydogtraining pup pride flag which is still in use today