“In the quiet exchange of warmth, species dissolve.”

Moore’s anthology insists that mixed‑breed dogs possess equal to that of pure‑bred or human characters. This stance supports a rights‑based ethic (Donaldson & Kymlicka 2011) that demands legal and cultural recognition of mixed‑breed animals beyond rescue stereotypes.

To answer these questions, the analysis proceeds through three sections: a literature review situating Moore within animal studies and hybridity theory; a methodological overview of close textual reading paired with a thematic content analysis; and a discussion of findings that foreground the anthology’s contribution to humane narrative practice.

Chessie Moore’s latest anthology, , disrupts this tradition. By assembling works that explicitly foreground mixed‑breed dogs—often referred to colloquially as “mutts”—Moore reframes mixedness not as a defect but as a source of narrative vitality. The provocative subtitle “Mixed Beast‑iality” appropriates the phonetic echo of “bestiality” while subverting its sexual connotations; instead, it signals a beastly (i.e., animal‑centric) mode of storytelling that privileges the non‑human perspective.

Visual storytelling thus reinforces a , echoing Nussbaum’s call for recognizing animal capacities for reciprocal relationships.