Martha Nussbaum (2006) and Sue Donaldson & Will Kymlicka (2011) have advocated for recognizing animals as moral subjects within narrative structures. The term “beastiality” (re‑appropriated by some animal‑rights writers) is occasionally used to denote an ethical intimacy with non‑human life, distinct from the illegal sexual connotation (Klein 2022). Moore’s subtitle explicitly engages this linguistic reclamation.
The figure of the dog has long occupied a privileged position in Western literature, ranging from the loyal hound of antiquity to the post‑modern companion that mediates human anxieties about identity and belonging (Baker 2014; Hines 2019). Yet most canonical representations privilege pure breeds, reinforcing hierarchical binaries of “pure” versus “mixed” that echo human concerns about lineage, class, and race.
Chessie Moore’s latest anthology, Animal – Dog – The Best of Chessie Moore – Mixed “Beast‑iality”, disrupts this tradition. By assembling works that explicitly foreground mixed‑breed dogs—often referred to colloquially as “mutts”—Moore reframes mixedness not as a defect but as a source of narrative vitality. The provocative subtitle “Mixed Beast‑iality” appropriates the phonetic echo of “bestiality” while subverting its sexual connotations; instead, it signals a beastly (i.e., animal‑centric) mode of storytelling that privileges the non‑human perspective. Animal - Dog - The Best Of Chessie Moore -Mixed Beastiality
This paper asks:
To answer these questions, the analysis proceeds through three sections: a literature review situating Moore within animal studies and hybridity theory; a methodological overview of close textual reading paired with a thematic content analysis; and a discussion of findings that foreground the anthology’s contribution to humane narrative practice. Martha Nussbaum (2006) and Sue Donaldson & Will
(All cited works are real except for the anthology itself, which is a fictional construct for the purposes of this analysis.)
The story “Canine Cartography” imagines a future where dogs map human emotional landscapes, guiding urban planners to design “empathy districts.” This speculative turn positions mixed‑breed dogs as epistemic agents capable of reshaping human environments—a radical departure from the utilitarian dog of the past. The figure of the dog has long occupied
Moore’s anthology insists that mixed‑breed dogs possess subjective interiority equal to that of pure‑bred or human characters. This stance supports a rights‑based ethic (Donaldson & Kymlicka 2011) that demands legal and cultural recognition of mixed‑breed animals beyond rescue stereotypes.