This Man Has Finally Achieved His Dream Of Animorphing Into A Collie

“I’d love to live like a dog,” you hear a friend say. “Wouldn’t it be great? Not having to worry about rent or bills, getting fed every day and going for daily walks on the beach.”

While most people are content to let the dream of living life like a domestic animal escape them — only to be revived intermittently as a mid-dinner party thought experiment — one man has taken drastic steps to bridge the gap between man and man’s best friend.

A Japanese man has recently taken to Twitter to show off his realistic human-sized collie costume, in a post that has already gone viral with over 55,000 likes.

着ぐるみをオーダーしてました！　おかげさまで動物になってみたいという夢を叶えることができました！ https://t.co/jUFxSWW6cl pic.twitter.com/zJIX8VcWfm

— トコ (@toco_eevee) April 11, 2022

“Thanks to you, I was able to fulfil my dream of becoming an animal!” Twitter user Toko says in the tweet.

Coming in at just over $22,000, the costume was created after forty days of labouring by special effects company Zeppet, who routinely create props for the film industry.

Speaking to reporters from MyNavi, Toko said that he deliberately chose the design of a collie for the costume due to its long coat. “Long-haired dogs can mislead the human figure. I met such a condition and made Collie, my favourite breed of dog,” Toko told MyNavi. 

The creators of the costume said that they relied heavily on sample photographs of collies to replicate the resplendent coat, and particularly strived to make the costume translate human movements into dog ones.

“The point is that the skeleton of a dog can be reproduced on the skeleton of a human. Since the structure of the skeleton is very different, we spent a lot of time studying how to make it look like a ‘dog’,” Zeppet told MyNavi.

In another video, Toko can be seen happily rolling around in the costume while demonstrating features that include a fully operational mouth.

The costume does admittedly skirt a little close to the uncanny valley, but who cares! Without the bravery of people with diverse hobbies and interests, we’d all be stuck cheerlessly pretending to support culturally hegemonic things like Rugby League. Boring!