Cynophobia: A Guide to Trigger Tagging
Cynophobia: Experiencing significant emotional and/or physical distress when thinking about, seeing, hearing and otherwise encountering canines. This can present as feelings of extreme dread or unease, rapid heart rate, difficulty breathing, sweating, shaking, nausea or stomach pain etc. These symptoms can persist for hours or days.
Canines: A group of animals that includes domestic or wild dogs, foxes, wolves, jackals, and coyotes. This also includes mythical canine species, such as werewolves or kitsune.
What Should I Be Trigger Tagging?
Here are examples of potential triggers to tag:
Discussion of canines (especially aggression, attacks or negative breed bias/stigma)
Photos or videos or gifs or audio of canines (especially if there's panting, barking, growling, whining, howling)
Artistic depictions of canines (including realistic and anthropomorphic or cartoony and otherwise stylized)
Canine-inspired mascots or fusonas or cyborgs/robots
Real or fictional stories, including erotica or fantasy, that include or feature canines
Discussion of books, movies or other media predominantly featuring canines and canine aggression scenes
Puppy play gear and discussion or canine-inspired role play
Memes, copypastas or reaction images/gifs including canines
Toys, plushies or statues of canines
Generated images including canines or canine-like subjects
In short: Does this post, or the media contained within it, feature or discuss canines, real or fictional, in any way? If yes, tag it! If you're unsure, it's best to tag anyways.
How Should I Tag?
You can use a tag specific to the animal in the post, or use one overarching tag for all posts. Sticking to a single consistent tag is generally preferred for ease of filtering.
Some tag examples of what to tag are: Canine, dog, coyote, wolf, werewolf, lycanthropy, kisune, fox, dogs of tumblr, doggos, pupper, beasts. You can also add a "cw" or "tw" before or after the tag, as in "tw canine" or "canine cw".
Things to Avoid
Do not trigger tag canines with 'cynophobia'. Given how the tumblr tagging system functions, doing so exposes people with cynophobia to triggering material when they try to connect with others and find support.
Do not include pictures of canines in infomative posts regarding cynophobia, this makes important resources inaccessible for the people they're meant to support.
