Puppy Pride Flag

Overview

Pierce's stated reason for the bone-on-leather-flag redesign was that he wanted a symbol he 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.' Pup Flip Gray's stated reason for the 2011 synthesis was to consolidate the competing earlier designs into a single shared community symbol with explicit lineage and a clean public-domain release. ^{[4] [2] [3]}

By the late 2000s several pup flags were in circulation. The earliest documented is a Dog Pride Flag by Scott Stevenson, who used the handle phyedo and had been the 1999 Michigan Drummerboy titleholder: a centred red Doberman head on a vertically striped field with a black border, first publicly mentioned in April 2001 on the now-defunct Leatherdog website. In an interview reproduced on puppy-play.com, Stevenson gave his reason: 'after many years of being in the community, and after being a former titleholder, I felt I needed to give back... there are A LOT of Dogs/young boys out there, and I hoped this could help us come together and identify ourselves where we couldn't otherwise.' He set out his colours as black for the leather side, brown for the dog side, a 'flesh' tone for the human side, white for the 'brightness and glow of pride and respect,' and the black border for the leather connection, and called the vertical stripes 'a reminder to stand up for yourself with dignity.' He framed all of it as his own interpretation, open to reinterpretation. The pupplay.info community history describes this earlier flag's designer as unknown; the attribution and the quotations rest on the puppy-play.com interview. ^[5][2]

Kirk 'Brue' Pierce then replaced the Doberman head with a centred red bone on the Leather Pride Flag's palette, on the grounds that the head was 'too breed-specific' and that a dog bone would be 'universally recognized around the world.' Jeff 'Grungepup' Hull produced a seven-stripe variant and convened the Facebook design group. ^[4][3]

Pup Flip Gray drew on those designs and on the group's input to produce the flag he released on 10 May 2011. What the design did was consolidate them: it kept the leather palette, took Pierce's bone, turned the stripes to a 30 degree diagonal, and widened the central white stripe. ^[3][1]

Identity & Context

Represented Identity

human pup / puppy play community

Subcommunity

Human pups, handlers, trainers and owners within the leather and kink communities

Movement

leather, kink, and fetish community visibility within Pride

Pup play grew out of gay male leather culture and its competition circuit, and that is where this flag was made and first flown. The practice is not confined to gay men. A survey of 733 participants found a sample that was 78.72 per cent men and 64.39 per cent gay or lesbian, and also recorded 57 women, 43 nonbinary participants, 104 bisexual, 63 pansexual and 22 straight participants, together with handlers and people who take both roles. Its authors write that pup play "is practiced beyond these groups," and that while most participants describe it as erotic it "also has important social functions." ^[6]

Creators

The Creator

Pup Flip Gray (LeatherPup)

Designer of the 2011 synthesis flag

Pup Flip Gray, also known as LeatherPup, is the designer of record for the 2011 Puppy Pride Flag. He released it to the public domain on 10 May 2011 so it could be reproduced "royalty free for private or commercial use," and produced flags and decals from it for the Tampa Leather Club, the Tampa Bay Leather Sir & Leather boy Contest, the Saint Petersburg Pride Parade, the Florida Leather n Fetish Pride Event and the International Puppy Contest. ^[1][4]

He had written Puppy Play 101 three years earlier, in 2008, to answer the questions people were asking about human pups at a point when, as he puts it, they "had become an endangered species at the time and seeing one was extremely rare"; Papa Woof Roth expanded the guide in 2012 for International Puppy Contest classes. In November 2011, six months after the flag's release, he founded International Puppy with Joe Mastrapasqua. That organisation is distinct from the earlier International Puppy and Trainer competition, which retired in March 2010. ^[7]

Pup Flip Gray released this design to public domain so it can be used and reproduced royalty free for private or commercial use. Feel free to copy and use it.

Motivations

• To consolidate competing earlier pup-flag designs into a single shared symbol with documented design lineage ^{[4] [2]}
• To create a flag for the puppy community that drew on the leather pride flag tradition while remaining visually distinguishable from the leather flag itself ^{[4] [2]}

Stated inspirations

• Tony DeBlase's Leather Pride Flag (1989), the source of the black, blue, and white stripe palette^[4][2][3]
• The 30-degree diagonal stripe orientation 'reminiscent of the boy flag designed by Keith P.,' chosen to indicate a new direction^[4][2][3]

Attribution notes

Pup Flip Gray (LeatherPup) is the designer of record. The design was developed with input from more than a thousand members of Jeff "Grungepup" Hull's Puppy Pride Flag Design Facebook group. ^[1]

The Stevenson attribution for the earlier Dog Pride Flag has two supports: the interview reproduced on puppy-play.com, and Gray's own published history, which names "the original Puppy Pride Flag created by Scott Stevenson." The pupplay.info reproduction of that same history drops the name and says only that "not much is known from the original designer." ^[5][3][7][2]

Origin

Digital Origin

Yes

Tampa Bay, Florida (region of documented early production and use). No place of design is documented.

Indigenous land context

Mocoso — homeland of the region of documented early use. The Mocoso lived on Hillsborough Bay between the Hillsborough River and the Alafia River, in territory that included what is now downtown Tampa. ^{[8] [8]}

Tocobaga — homeland of the region of documented early use. The Tocobaga, numbering about 1,300, lived along the northern part of Old Tampa Bay with their main village in the Safety Harbor area. The name Tampa may come from the Tocobaga town Tanpa. ^{[8] [8]}

Colonial / settler context

These are the peoples of the region where the flag is documented in early production and use, not a documented place of design. Spanish contact from the sixteenth century, European diseases including measles, smallpox and influenza, warfare, and slaving raids destroyed the Tampa Bay societies; by 1711 no organised Native towns remained in Florida except near St. Augustine. ^[8]

That history is distinct from the later histories of the living Nations in Florida today. The Seminole Tribe of Florida states that the Seminole people descend from many Native peoples of Florida, Georgia, Alabama and beyond, and that the Tribe as a political entity was created by the Seminoles in 1957; it records the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida as a separate government, culturally related. ^{[9] [8][9]}

Land status

Homelands of the Mocoso and Tocobaga; see the note on later Nations.

The design was made through an online process: Gray drew it from input by more than a thousand members of Jeff "Grungepup" Hull's Puppy Pride Flag Design Facebook group, and the release and source files were published to the web. ^[1][2] Where Gray was living when he drew it is not documented, and no source read here states it. The Tampa Bay organisations and events are where the flag is documented in early production and use, because Gray's own site records him making flags and decals for them; that is not evidence of where the design was made. ^[4]

Dates & Chronology

Year Created

2011

Exact date

May 10, 2011

First public use

April 6, 2014

Period in Use

Released May 2011; documented in physical use from 2014 to 2026

Creation Bounds

10 May 2011 is the date of the design release and its publication, not of a physical flag. Gray dated the release himself in the file comment of the master image, and the Commons record repeats it. ^[1] The earliest documented physical display is later. The International Puppy Contest page was already showing the St. Pete Pride photograph when the Internet Archive captured it on 6 April 2014, which establishes that the photograph was published by that date. It does not date the parade itself. ^[10] Photographs then document the exact design through to Milano Pride in June 2026. ^[7]

The 2011 design was adopted as the official flag of International Puppy Contest and used by the Tampa Leather Club, the Tampa Bay Leather Sir & Leather boy Contest, the Saint Petersburg Pride Parade, the Florida Leather n Fetish Pride Event, and additional Florida and US leather and pup organizations. Internationally, the French-speaking pup community produced its own 'French Puppy Play Flag' iterations in 2014 and 2017 (designed by Franck Deloux), and the Australian pup community debuted a Pup and Handler Pride Flag at the Inaugural Australian Pup and Handler Competition in 2017 with thicker horizontal stripes designed specifically to differentiate the flag from the Leather Pride Flag (with which the diagonal version had been confused at pride events). ^{[4] [2] [3]} The design was reinterpreted in Guillaume Vandame's Symbols, five painted banners commissioned for Sculpture in the City 2022 and hung in Leadenhall Market in the City of London, alongside banners drawn from the polyamory, BDSM and rubber pride flags.

Pierce's first-person history (republished on pupplay.info) frames the bone-on-leather-flag design as the product of years of self-identification as a 'gay leather dog,' growing out of his identification with Tony DeBlase's Leather Pride Flag while feeling that something was missing from a complete representation of his own pup identity. He notes that his design was initially copyrighted by Leather Creations 'to help protect it from being misused' before circulating more widely. ^{[4] [2]}

Parallel designs, none of them a revision of this flag: Franck Deloux's French Puppy Play Flag, in two versions; the Australian Pup and Handler Pride Flag, which first appeared in 2016 and had its public debut at the Inaugural Australian Pup and Handler Competition in 2017, gifted into the public domain as a flag in March 2017 with other uses requiring permission; and John Jasio's PUP & CO flag of 2018. ^[4][5] The dates for the French flag are unsettled in the source, which says the French group revisited the design "in 2016" and then that the flag "has gone through two successive versions (2014 and 2017)." ^[5]

Lineage

Evolved from

Leather Pride Flag

Direct children

Chicago Puppy Pride, Pup and Handler Pride Flag

Related flags

International Bear Brotherhood Flag, Rubber Pride Flag

Sibling flags

BDSM Rights Flag (2005, Tanos), Chicago Leather Pride, Fetish Pride Flag, Foot Fetish Pride Flag (2020, Fetishie), Leather Girl Pride Flag, Leather Woman Pride Flag, Two-Spirit Leather Pride Flag

Tony DeBlase's 1989 Leather Pride Flag supplied the nine black, blue and white stripes and the structural vocabulary the design reworks. ^[2]

Three pup flags precede it and none has an entry here. Scott Stevenson's Dog Pride Flag, first mentioned in April 2001, set the precedent of a pup-specific emblem centred on leather colours, using a Doberman head. Kirk "Brue" Pierce replaced that head with a red bone, on the reasoning that a dog bone is "universally recognized around the world" where a Doberman head was not. Jeff "Grungepup" Hull produced a seven-stripe design and ran the Facebook group the 2011 flag was drawn from. ^[4][5]

The 30 degree diagonal is credited to Keith P.'s Boy Flag, which had already used that convention. Who first turned the leather stripes for a pup flag is disputed in the community sources, and this entry does not settle it. ^[4]

The Pup-Handler Pride Flag of 2016 takes the widened white stripe, the diagonal structure, the leather palette and the red bone from this design. ^[4]

Lineage tree

Every record reachable from this one through documented parent and child relationships: 4 records across 3 generations.

Ancestor

Leather Pride Flag

This record

Puppy Pride Flag

Children

Pup and Handler Pride Flag, Chicago Puppy Pride

Colors & Symbolism

The flag asserts a pup-community identity within the leather and fetish lineage by retaining the leather flag's stripe palette and replacing its central heart symbol with a centered red bone. The widened white stripe is intended to represent the breadth of the pup community, and the diagonal stripe orientation (borrowed from the boy flag) is intended to indicate 'a new direction' within the broader leather subculture tradition. The bone itself is described by Pup Flip Gray as representing 'the unconditional, non-judgmental heart of the puppy.' ^{[4] [2] [3]}

These are Pup Flip Gray’s published 2011 specifications. The hexadecimal values are direct conversions of the published RGB values. ^[1]

Red bone

The unconditional, non-judgmental heart of the puppy. ^[2]

Widened white stripe

The breadth of the puppy community. It is one and a half times the width of the other stripes. ^[2]

30 degree diagonal arrangement

The convention Keith P.'s Boy Flag had already used, cited as the precedent for turning the leather stripes. ^[4]

The individual stripe colours carry no published meanings. They inherit the Leather Pride Flag's tradition of leaving colour meanings for the viewer to supply. ^[2]

Design

Aspect Ratio

5:3 · original file

Ratio Notes

The master file Gray released is 3,000 by 1,800 pixels, which is exactly 5:3. ^[1]

Orientation

diagonal

Stripe Count

9

Layout

diagonal_stripes_with_central_emblem

Center Symbol

Red bone

Nine diagonal stripes set at a 30-degree angle (alternating black, blue, and white in the same configuration as the Leather Pride Flag) with the central white stripe widened to approximately 1.5 times the width of the other stripes. A solid red bone is centered on the field. ^{[4] [2] [3]}

The flag's design files (in CorelDRAW vector and bitmap formats) were originally hosted on humanpups.com and made available for free download by Pup Flip Gray on the International Puppy Contest site. Copyright was waived; the design is in the public domain. ^[3] Source files were published in CorelDRAW vector, PNG, JPG and PDF formats, and as a ZIP of all of them. ^[3][7] The Commons artwork is 3000 by 1800 pixels, a 5:3 ratio. ^[11]

A nine-stripe diagonal flag derived from Tony DeBlase's Leather Pride Flag, with the same alternating pattern of black and royal blue stripes around a central white stripe. The stripes are rotated to a 30-degree diagonal (a convention borrowed from Keith P.'s boy flag), and the central white stripe is widened to approximately 1.5 times the width of the other stripes. A solid red dog bone is centered on the field, replacing the leather flag's tilted red heart. ^{[4] [2] [3]}

Usage & Adoption

First Users

Tampa Leather Club, Tampa Bay Leather Sir & Leather boy Contest, Saint Petersburg Pride Parade, Florida Leather n Fetish Pride Event, International Puppy Contest

Organizations

International Puppy and the International Puppy Contest (official flag), Tampa Leather Club, Vancouver Pups and Handlers

Geographic Usage

United States (Florida; San Francisco), Canada (Vancouver), Germany (Berlin, Frankfurt), United Kingdom (London, Nottinghamshire), Italy (Milan)

Online Usage

humanpups.com, pupplay.info, International Puppy Contest official site, Wikimedia Commons

Event Usage

St. Pete Pride Parade, Florida ^{[3] [7]}, Vancouver Pride, 2 and 3 August 2015, Christopher Street Day, Berlin, 28 July 2018, Christopher Street Day, Frankfurt am Main, 16 July 2022, Sculpture in the City, Leadenhall Market, London, 2022, in Guillaume Vandame's work Symbols, Nottinghamshire Pride, 26 July 2025, Milano Pride, 27 June 2026

Current Status

active

The flag is the official flag of International Puppy and of the International Puppy Contest. ^[3] Photographs document the exact design at Pride events in Florida, Vancouver, Berlin, Frankfurt, London, Nottinghamshire and Milan between 2014 and 2026. ^[7] Other pup flags circulate alongside it, including an Australian pup and handler flag and French pup play designs; those are separate designs with their own entries and are not counted here as use of this one.

Image Archive

Documented Use

Creator and Community

Renderings

Adaptations

Variants

Discourse & Debates

• Which pup flag design is 'the' pup flag. Multiple versions circulate (Stevenson's Doberman head, Pierce's bone redesign, Hull's seven-stripe, Pup Flip Gray's nine-stripe, the Australian Pup and Handler flag, the French Puppy Play flag), and different communities have adopted different versions. The 2011 Pup Flip Gray design has the strongest institutional standing as the official IPC flag, but it does not hold a monopoly.
• Whether the pup flag belongs in Pride contexts at all, or whether it is a community-affiliation symbol within leather and kink subculture rather than an identity flag in the same sense as the bisexual or asexual flags.

Common misidentifications

• Confused with the Leather Pride Flag at Pride events, because it keeps that flag's stripe palette. The confusion is documented: it is part of why the 2017 Australian Pup and Handler flag switched to thicker horizontal stripes. ^[4]
• Sometimes treated as interchangeable with the Australian Pup and Handler Pride Flag (2016/2017), which is a separate design with horizontal stripes and additional pup-head and handler-hand symbols.
• The earlier Doberman-head version by Scott Stevenson is sometimes mistaken for the current flag.

The terms 'pup,' 'puppy,' 'dog,' and 'human pup' are used variably across the community. Pierce's first-person history uses 'pup,' 'puppy,' and 'dog' interchangeably. The 'leather pup' / 'leather dog' framing emphasizes the community's roots in the gay leather tradition. ^{[4] [2]}

Footnotes & Citations

Image Sources

Rendering

2011 IPC official flag (Pup Flip Gray)

• The flag as Gray released it, at the 5:3 proportion of the 3,000 by 1,800 master. · Credit: Design by Pup Flip Gray (LeatherPup) · Wikimedia Commons file, author Vurtec, CC0 1.0Rights The design was released to the public domain by Gray in 2011. The Commons file is CC0 1.0 and its author field names Vurtec, which is a statement about the file rather than about the design.
• Pup Flip Gray in a leather pup hood and wolf-eye contacts, in front of a Tampa Leather Club banner. Captioned on his own site "Human Puppy Flip wearing Wolf-Eye Contacts." · Credit: Subject: Pup Flip Gray (LeatherPup) · puppyprideflag.comRights No photographer is named and no licence is stated on the source page. Rights undetermined. Gray is the subject; no evidence identifies him as the photographer or rights holder.
• Pup play at the Folsom Street Fair, San Francisco, 21 September 2014. Photographed by Joped. The flag does not appear in this photograph; it documents the community the flag was made for. · Credit: Joped, CC BY-SA 2.0 · Wikimedia Commons
• Members of Vancouver Pups and Handlers at Vancouver Pride 2015 beneath two Puppy Pride Flags. Photograph by GoToVan, CC BY 2.0. · Credit: GoToVan, CC BY 2.0 · Wikimedia Commons
• Vancouver Pride, 2 August 2015. Photographed by vl04, who titled it "BDSM at the Vancouver LGBTQ Pride 2015." · Credit: vl04, CC BY 2.0 · Wikimedia Commons
• "A pair of pups at the Folsom Street East Festival," New York, 20 June 2016, in the photographer's own words. The flag does not appear here either; the photograph is held for the community it shows. · Credit: istolethetv, CC BY 2.0 · Wikimedia Commons
• Dexx, a human pup known in Amsterdam and Berlin, photographed 29 June 2016 and uploaded to Wikimedia Commons by the pup himself. His description calls him "equal parts playful goofball and thoughtful mentor," and known on the kink scene "for his role as a coach and inspiration." One of the few named pups in the freely licensed record. The flag is not pictured. · Credit: User:MisterX, CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
• "Portrait of Man in Leather Puppy Mask," Dore Alley Festival, San Francisco, 30 July 2017. A deliberate portrait rather than a parade snapshot, from the city's Leather and LGBTQ Cultural District. The flag is not pictured. · Credit: Exploratorium efimeros, CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
• The vector rendition on Wikimedia Commons, uploaded 1 March 2018 by Wcloister under CC0, carrying the designer's own description text. It illustrates the Pup play articles on the German, Spanish and Italian Wikipedias. ^[11] · Credit: Pup Flip Gray (LeatherPup), CC0 1.0 · Wikimedia Commons
• Christopher Street Day, Berlin, 28 July 2018. The photographer's own description reads simply "Puppy pride." · Credit: Sargoth, CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
• The flag combined with the American public library logo, made by Hafuboti in 2019 and captioned "Representation and inclusion are core values of public libraries." An instance of the public-domain release being taken up outside the leather and pup community. · Credit: Hafuboti, CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
• The Chub Puppy Pride Flag, made by Rich DeRosa in 2019, which his own description says "looks like Neapolitan Ice Cream with a red paw print in a black circle." A later crossing of pup identity with another leather-adjacent community, drawn without the leather flag's stripes. · Credit: Rich DeRosa, CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
• Guillaume Vandame's Symbols at Leadenhall Market, London, commissioned for Sculpture in the City 2022. The banner at upper left takes this flag's diagonal stripes and its centred red bone. Vandame's banners reinterpret community flags rather than reproducing them, and Wikimedia Commons files the photograph under Puppy Pride, polyamory, BDSM and rubber pride flags together. Photographed by Loz Pycock. · Credit: Loz Pycock, CC BY-SA 2.0 · Wikimedia Commons
• Christopher Street Day, Frankfurt am Main, 16 July 2022. · Credit: C.Suthorn / cc-by-sa-4.0 / commons.wikimedia.org · Wikimedia Commons
• Nottinghamshire Pride, 26 July 2025. · Credit: Aethonatic, CC0 1.0 · Wikimedia Commons
• Milano Pride, 27 June 2026. · Credit: Dispe, CC0 1.0 · Wikimedia Commons
• Puppy Pride Flags at the St. Pete Pride Parade, flying beside a Tampa Bay Leather & Fetish Tribe banner and United States service flags. Published on the International Puppy Contest site and on the designer's own, captioned "Official Puppy Pride Flags of International Puppy Contest at St. Pete Pride Parade." ^[3][7] · Credit: International Puppy Contest · International Puppy Contest