Hello all! I've wanted to get this off my mind/chest for some time but I've been reluctant to share as it involves friends of mine and I'm simply a 3rd party witness to things through the story. Anyway here we go.

So many of you know Duke the Dancing Dog, and most of you know that's not the first version of the suit due to age, wear and tear, etc. I'm not sure how many of you know that the original Duke v1.0 was made and worn by Brokken T Wolf. Some of that's been lost to the winds of time along with Brokken being a bit of an obscure name these days versus 15 years ago.

Now I've always known Brokken to be one to retire his suits/ characters rather than sell them off unless it's a very special circumstance. In the case of Duke I know he was starting to show his age some and the subject of retirement was looming closer. Fursuit makers were still a rarity around 04 so anyone getting their hands on Duke would have a premium bit of goods.

It was around this time period I was still young and just getting started into the fandom. I'd met up with the FL furs and they seemed like really cool people so I made the effort to try and visit once a year at least. I could afford the time and the airfare to do it so I visited the Orlando area furs a handful of times inside of a few years, usually staying with Kuddlepup & Wildwolf at the house they were sharing at the time.

Wild was always kind of excitable about fursuit things and being a very good builder at the time when there were so few he knew Brokken well. At some point while I was staying on one of these visits I recall him telling me that he was getting Duke from Brokken. I was surprised to hear it, but he said it was conditional. The idea was that he could only have Duke if the character remained retired. The suit itself was supposed to be stuffed and turned into a giant plushie. Neither party wanted it mentioned because frankly, we're all adults and things were going to be happening with that plush. That was the last I heard of it and assumed that's how things ended.

Move forward some time and suddenly Duke is in Australia with Oz Roo. I figured it was odd, but that Brokken must've approved this or done the sale directly or whatever and I never had a second thought about it. - that is until Midwest FurFest 2 years ago.

I was having dinner with Brokken at the bar in the Hyatt with friends, and we'd all been drinking some. We saw Duke strut by and Brokken's face looked pained. I heard him say something to the effect of "that suit's supposed to be retired..." before he went back to eating and drinking. In that moment I could see it was hurting him to see his character still being made use of without his approval (apparently). I'm just guessing at this point, but knowing Oz as I do, I'm sure he talked to Wild and worked out some sort of backhand exchange for the suit. Whether Oz knew about the whole giant plush thing or not I can't say. Whether Brokken has asked him to stop and been rebuffed I can't say either.

Having my own personal experiences with Oz turn sour over business, I'm just kind of tired of ignoring the signs. I wanted to put this story out there so that maybe it'll serve as warning to some of you that just because he puts on a suit and wiggles around in it doesn't make him a good person. He's a very good actor and puts on a hell of a show. I'm warning you. Trust him at your own risk. The more trust you extend him, the more you'll burn for it if it gets in the way of whatever he needs in order to try and stay up on his mountain.

Leaving comments off because this is an opinion piece/story and I'm not looking for this to be some rally point to hate on the dude.