Animal - Dog - The Best Of Chessie Moore -mixed Beastiality ((install)) Jun 2026

The Best of Chessie Moore: Mixed “Beast‑iality” in Contemporary Canine Narrative An interdisciplinary literary‑cultural analysis of mixed‑breed representation in modern dog‑centric storytelling

Abstract The recent anthology Animal – Dog – The Best of Chessie Moore – Mixed “Beast‑iality” (2025) compiles a diverse selection of short stories, poems, and illustrated vignettes that foreground mixed‑breed dogs as cultural symbols, narrative agents, and sites of identity negotiation. This paper investigates how Moore’s work reconfigures traditional notions of purity, pedigree, and anthropocentric hierarchy by foregrounding “mixedness” as a literary and aesthetic strategy. Drawing on theories of animal studies, hybridity, and narrative ethics, the analysis demonstrates that the anthology simultaneously (1) celebrates the lived realities of mixed‑breed dogs, (2) critiques the commodification of pedigree breeding, and (3) proposes a speculative ecology of interspecies companionship. The study concludes that Moore’s “Mixed Beast‑iality”—a neologism that deliberately plays on the word “beastial” to foreground the beastly (animal) rather than the illicit—offers a model for humane, imaginative engagement with domestic animals in contemporary literature.

Keywords Mixed‑breed dogs, animal studies, hybridity, narrative ethics, domesticity, Chessie Moore, speculative ecology, cultural representation

1. Introduction 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. This paper asks: Animal - Dog - The Best Of Chessie Moore -Mixed Beastiality

How does Moore’s anthology reconfigure the cultural meaning of mixed‑breed dogs? What literary techniques does she employ to give agency to animal subjects? What ethical and ecological implications arise from her speculative re‑imagining of human–dog relations?

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.

2. Literature Review 2.1 Dogs in Literary Tradition Early literary depictions of dogs often cast them as symbolic extensions of human virtues or vices (e.g., loyalty, ferocity). Scholars such as C. M. Baker (2014) argue that these representations reinforce anthropocentric hierarchies, while J. Hines (2019) demonstrates how contemporary authors employ the dog as a mirror for post‑human concerns. 2.2 Mixed‑Breed Animals and Hybridity The concept of mixedness has been examined primarily in the context of post‑colonial hybridity (Bhabha 1994) and genetic studies (Parker & vonHoldt 2020). In animal studies, mixed‑breed dogs have received limited scholarly attention, often reduced to “rescue narratives” (Miller 2021). Recent work by S. Levy (2023) suggests that mixedness can function as a site of resistance against dominant breeding ideologies, yet a systematic literary analysis remains absent. 2.3 Narrative Ethics and the Non‑Human Subject 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 Best of Chessie Moore: Mixed “Beast‑iality” in

3. Methodology 3.1 Corpus The anthology comprises 24 pieces: 14 short stories, 6 poems, and 4 illustrated vignettes. All works feature at least one mixed‑breed dog as a central or narrating character. 3.2 Analytical Framework

Close Reading – Each piece was examined for narrative voice, point‑of‑view, and linguistic markers that attribute agency to the animal. Thematic Coding – Using NVivo, passages were coded under the following provisional themes: Hybrid Identity , Resistance to Pedigree Norms , Companionship as Mutuality , and Speculative Ecologies . Comparative Mapping – Findings were juxtaposed with existing scholarship on pure‑breed narratives (Baker 2014; Hines 2019) to highlight divergences.

4. Analysis 4.1 Hybrid Identity: The Mixed‑Breed as a Narrative Protagonist In the story “Marlowe’s Mosaic” , the mutt “Marlowe” narrates in first‑person, describing his body as a “patchwork of Labrador, Border Collie, and stray street‑wise instincts.” The prose foregrounds bodily hybridity as a source of epistemic plurality: the mutt “Marlowe” narrates in first‑person

“My nose knows the scent of the park’s fresh grass and the alley’s stale cheese; each nose‑track is a line of a different language, and together they write my map.”

Such passages destabilize the notion of a singular, pure identity, aligning with Bhabha’s “third space” where new meaning emerges. 4.2 Resistance to Pedigree Ideology The poem “Pedigree Papers” employs satirical irony: