Atrophy is the direct opposite of the service dog petplay trope, her doghood is a two-way metaphor with her disability. Her owner is her caretaker. She's a special needs full time dog and she's hard to live with but the entirety of her relationships are about community living and how shes been taken in as the heart of everything. Because a disabled person is a dog in the way they are in the room but never talked to as a peer, instead serving as a central item and sometimes mascot, but atrophy is at the center of interactions and if she is in a room everyone will flock to her and help and keep her company. She gets to have this ideal of what the kindest possible life as a dog could be, as to counterbalance the abuse she's suffered. A disabled person is a dog because they are infantilized and children are dogs and dogs are children. But atrophy is despite her simple lifestyle and lack of communication treated as a grown ass adult who just happens to be a grown ass dog. It is known that she cant make choices for herself very much (its just how she works) but her autonomy is never put into question. Being a dog allows her to be treated the way she both wants and Needs to be treated, without the judgement that comes from needing it while human. Like the difference in how people treat caring for gimps vs caring for disabled people despite the same acts being done. A love of gimps is a love of the concept of the disabled, without the disabled present in the room. And dont get me wrong atrophy is someone who has experienced all of it and the worse most dehumanizing sides of disability and doghood but whats relevant in its current life is that it has found community that centers it as a person while still letting it hold the space it wants to have (being a dog). No matter how much some people try to undo her dehumanization by telling her she can be human, it would never change the fact that she is, both at her core and from her life experience, a dog.
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