The Question was "What's it like being a zoophile?" I had to stop and think about this. What IS it like, having animals for lovers; preferring to have a relationship - emotional, physical and spiritual - with a dog in preference to a human?

Before I try to answer that question, understand that the answer I give will be my answer alone, and probably won't reflect the opinions or feelings of other zoos. Some background about myself may give an insight into the 'Why' (if there is such a thing) or the rationalizations behind some of my thoughts.

Firstly I'll define what I mean by "zoo" A Zoophile is literally someone who has sexual relations with an animal. That kinda globally covers everything, including using an animal for sex the same way you might use a horse to pull a plow, or outright rape. My personal definition is someone who treats their animal the way they would treat a human partner: with love, respect, tenderness. Everything a married couple could expect from their partners. I like to think that I fall into this category.

I was born in New Zealand, in a rural district on a dairy farm. It was a very small community - population 150. And most of those would have been relatives of my (large) family. The school catered for children aged from five to thirteen years. While I was there the school roll fluctuated between 11 to 24 pupils in total. One teacher. For what it's worth, I was top of my class - of four.

So... we have a young, intelligent potential Zoophile on a farm in the middle of nowhere. Surely he must have been out bonking the cattle at every opportunity, right? Unfortunately not. My family shifted from the farm into a nearby city when I was t hirteen, just when things would have been getting interesting for a lad being ravaged by puberty. The farm animals were no more objects of possible sexual interaction to me than they would have been to anyone my age. The closest I would have been to sex ual interplay with the farm animals would have been the one occasion when a young calf suckled briefly on my dick. I can't remember the actual events leading up to that, but I remember not enjoying the experience. And one or two times I vainly attempte d to jerk off one of our neutered male house cats. No real reason. I think I just wanted to see if they could orgasm.

It was in high school where I discovered a terrible truth. I was one of the bright pupils in the school. Without doing a jot of homework, I breezed through School Certificate and University Entrance exams. I don't know what the American equivalents ar e, but whatever are the normal qualifications for a 15 and 16 year old to achieve, I did. With Honors.

In high school I had absolutely no sexual contact with animals. Or humans, for that matter. Because I had no contact with the girls at the local Catholic Girls school, I was labelled faggot. To be honest, I had several sisters with whom I was constan tly at war, and so didn't especially like girls anyway.

My academic results were excellent. Socially, I bombed out completely. So I left school as soon as was decently possible.

At around age 19, I moved into a house with one of my high- school friends. As we were both unemployed, we used to spend a lot of time wasting time and doing silly things. One of the less silly things that my friend did was to purchase a Labrador bitch puppy for a pet, as he had been brought up with a dog who had recently died of cancer. I was totally captivated by this puppy. My family had never owned dogs, so bringing up a puppy was such a novelty. In fact, I was so impressed that I decided to get a puppy of my own. A German Shepherd dog.

I honestly can't remember if I bought the dog with a view to possible sexual contact or not. I don't think I did. But I loved this dog HUGELY, and used to take him with me everywhere I could. We used to go walking at 2:00am for miles. He used to sleep on my bed with me, and I trained him to do all sorts of clever tricks.

I also started to jerk him off. I don't really know why; it just seemed at the time to be a natural extension of our relationship together. He liked it, when I finally started doing it correctly, and I liked doing it for him.

Changing jobs and circumstances took me to Auckland, and a rapid succession of accommodation changes. One very intense period of my life was spent at a rented house.

It was in this flat that my relationship with my German Shepherd intensified. It's kind of ironic that people often confront me with 'animal consent' type of arguments when condemning bestiality. I say this because of the way I first experienced the ple asure of being mounted by a dog. I was in the habit of having a shower in the evenings, and then going straight to bed without getting dressed. One particular evening, I had to make the bed so I was doing that in the nude. As I was working - bending over to tuck in the sheets and blankets - I noticed that my Shepherd was getting quite excited and aroused. Finally he made an attempt to mount me while I was bent over. This intrigued me. I don't know if I'd even considered having him mount me before this. So I encouraged him and eventually (after attempts over several days) we got it right, and he screwed me. This seemed to be another natural progression in our relationship. And we were both in paradise. Often.

Also while I was at this flat, I purchased another puppy, a Saint Bernard bitch. There were two main reasons for getting her. The reason I told everyone was that her mellowing influence would reduce the aggressive tendencies in my dog. The second reas on, which I didn't tell anyone, was that I wanted to have sexual intercourse with a bitch.

Throughout all this I had a fairly ordinary (if somewhat complex) series of relationships with human partners, both male and female. Eventually I moved into my own house. Here I settled down into a nice pattern of living. I had a good job, a roof over my head that one day would be mine own, and all the sex I could eat. I decided, therefore, that I should like to spend the rest of my life living as a bachelor with my dogs.

Shortly after this internal mental declaration, I met the woman who would become my wife.

Now in theory (and on TV), life from this point onwards should have become the "And they lived happily ever after" part. But reality is never quite so simple. We split up after two years of marriage. During those two years, separate incidents took both my dogs from me.

My aggressive German Shepherd attacked a child, and the child needed stitches in his leg. This is as good as a death sentence for a dog in New Zealand. I was fortunate in that I knew the dog ranger involved, and I managed to get the sentence reduced to having my dog relocated to work for a security firm in another city. I helped them put my dog into the rangers van. Then I turned away because I couldn't bear to watch the sight of my first lover being taken away. And I cried. For a week I cried. The song "Unchained melody" by The Righteous Brothers still makes me sad. It was playing on the radio at that time. And I do still hunger for his touch.

I wasn't a very pleasant person to live with for a while after that. Depressed and bleak. But my wife helped me through it, and I still had my St Bernard bitch.

Life, I think I have pointed this out before, is a twisty-turny thing. Just as I was recovering from the untimely departure of my German Shepherd, my St Bernard started to become ill, and went off her food.

I guess I suspected she wasn't well, but the event that made me take her to the vet for a check up was when she had a convulsion. I suspect she had other convulsions when I wasn't around, but this was the first I had witnessed. And it scared the bejes us out of me. Xanth lay on her side with her legs locked stiff, her face was contorted into a rictus, and she was champing her teeth so I was fearing for her tongue. As she spasmed, she urinated uncontrollably. I phoned my vet in a panic, and he told me to watch her and keep her company. So I sat with her until the spasm passed, and for about an hour afterwards. She was very distressed when she regained control of her body.

When I took her to the vet, he took several blood tests and discovered she was dangerously low in calcium. So we put her on a high dosage calcium supplement and for awhile she improved. Meanwhile the vet had discovered that Xanth had a congenital kidney disease that was causing her high blood toxicity. All too soon, Xanth lost her appetite and started to waste away again. My wife and I tried to bring her appetite back up by trying every brand of dog-food on the market. We cooked her special treats and meals. But she still slowly wasted away. If you could have seen the comparison between the healthy glowing animal she was, and the frail, thin creature I took back to the vet, you would have cried.

I remember standing in the vets office as he explained what he could try next to increase her appetite and get her eating again. Then it kinda hit me. I asked him if we were curing her, or just prolonging the inevitable. He said that basically there w as no hope for her. So I calmly told him that I would like to have her euthanased.

I sent my wife to wait for me in the waiting room, and I held onto Xanth while the vet injected the lethal drug. The drug was bright blue, and I remember thinking that nothing that color could be good for you. Then Xanth got very heavy in my arms, a nd I realized she was dead. Just like that.

And I lowered her gently to the floor, still caressing her head. And I cried.

My wife comforted me, and drove me back to our house. I thought I was O.K., and then I burst into tears in the kitchen and couldn't stop crying. I didn't have any idea how much I loved Xanth until she was gone.

I was depressed for a long time. My work was suffering and my relationship with my wife was suffering. People I knew would make comments that on the surface were quite harmless, but cut me deeply - "You got rid of one of your dogs, didn't you?", and "Look, it was only a dog. You'll get over it!"

After I found myself idly wondering how I'd commit suicide (just as an intellectual exercise, you understand), I realized that something had to be done. Finding a psychologist in this city proved an awful lot harder than I was expecting. Eventually my doctor referred me to a free counselling service.

I found it surprisingly easy to talk to the counsellor. Eventually I told him of my sexual relationship with Xanth. I have to confess that I was expecting him to denounce me and wheel out a straight-jacket. But he surprised me by declaring happily that THAT was the reason I was so feeling so damned rotten. I hadn't lost a dog, I had lost a lover! And I couldn't express that pain to my friends because of the social taboo. Even my wife couldn't fully comprehend the extent of the loss I had suffered. So I was being forced to carry the pain of my loss all alone.

That man saved my sanity, and possibly my life. A week later I saw him again, but the session was short. I didn't really need him anymore. I had my loss back in perspective and my pain under control.

I can't even begin to put into words all the happy memories I have of her, and the love I had for her. I know there was nothing I could have done to save her life, but I DO know I could have made her quality of life better, and I regret that I learned t hat lesson after her death.

Eventually I purchased two new dogs. Two male Great Dane puppies. They are the dogs I still have now.

O.K., so that is the background. Sorry, I didn't mean to make it an autobiography. But I hope it has illustrated that I never made a conscious decision to become a zoophile. It kind of found me and happened without my consent.

So back to the question:- What's it like to be a 'Zoo'? I suspect it's an awful lot like being 'straight'. I've had relationships with people - male and female - and with my dogs. And I've been most comfortable in the relationships with my dogs. So I choose them.

How do I feel about being a zoophile? Well, my sexual preference is illegal. And the general public opinion is that bestiality is lumped in with paedophilia and necrophilia as things that are gross, perverted, only performed by VERY sick people, and best not talked about. So VERY few of my friends are aware that I have sex with my dogs. In fact, very few people even know that I am bisexual. There is still quite a lot of social stigma attached to homosexual relationships in New Zealand.

So it's something I really can't talk about. I couldn't express how bad I felt about losing my two previous lovers, or how great I felt when I got my two new puppies. It makes me feel very lonely sometimes.

But what really cuts me to the heart is that I know I am going to outlive my lovers. Several times over. A dog has a life span of nine to eleven years, perhaps a little longer depending on the breed. So I know that I'm going to watch my lovers die several times over. That is something most 'straight' people will never have to be concerned about.

Still, I have two lovers. They care about me, and are always pleased to see me. I care about them immensely. We sometimes sit for hours just basking in each others company.

What's it like to be a zoo?

Wonderful.