💡🐇 Naughty Thoughts

Beast in Show

Adele is a shapeshifter. Possibly a werewolf, possibly some kind of curse. Maybe it's even some magic that she's trying for the first time. But the big deal is that she turns into a wolf. Her friend Steven has a great idea how she can make some money, in order to pay for something she's having trouble with. She's reluctant to use her gift/curse like this, but she's a bit desperate and eventually agrees.

Basically, there's a big dog show in town. She can pass for a normal dog when transformed. And Steven figures that they should easily be able to take a prize in the obedience competition. It's not going to be easy, because she needs to be able to respond immediately to simple commands, and suppress her normal sarcastic attitude. And in animal form it's harder for her to think clearly; sometimes she's struggling against her emotions and instincts. But they figure that with 6 weeks of practice, she can make it into a habit, and learn the tricks she's expected to do as well. They might not win the big prize, but even 3rd place in the obedience contest would be enough to pay off whatever debt she's struggling with.

But there's one thing she doesn't realise. Possibly Steven knows this, or maybe he skimmed over whatever book he was reading to research the transformation. But even if she doesn't realise it, her mind is a lot less complex in animal form. She isn't as smart, and if she's trying to learn, it's easier to train her into a conditioned response. So during the training she's getting more and more like a real dog being trained; getting genuinely excited about doing well. And afterwards, the habits she's picked up carry over to when she's human. She feels a growing desire to please Steven; she wants him to praise her, and feels really good when she can make him happy. And this can impair her judgement somewhat; even if she knows it's unhealthy, she starts to value his approval over her own interests, even when she's back in human form. She feels so good when he calls her 'good girl' that it's hard to resist continuing whatever she did to earn it.

By the time of the show, she's already started feeling like she has to obey her master, and it's hard to see that this isn't normal. That's when she realises what's happened. If Steven knew, maybe he'll tell her. If she hadn't had the gift for long (like, they found a spellbook with transformation and decided to use it), this could have been what he was aiming for all along. But in any case, she starts to realise that she's happy. So whether she wanted this or not, it's working for her and she doesn't want to step back.

A slightly weirder version of the story might have a "harder" round of the obedience contest, where the dogs are given some drug that's supposed to make them harder to control. Steven can't find out much about this; it seems that all the regular competitors know what the drug is, and pretty much speak in euphemisms about it. But they assume that as she still has her human mind to remind her what's going on, she should be able to overcome it. Maybe have a little practise seeing if she can remember what she's doing on different recreational drugs. But it turns out the special contest uses an aphrodisiac, so after they win she's still in heat and it'll last for a couple of days (possibly stopping her from returning to human form).