Man spends more than $20,000 on dog suit to ‘become an animal’

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A Japanese man named Toco has turned heads during his first walk in public dressed as a realistic dog.

He spent more than $20,000 on a custom-made dog suit to make his childhood dream of “becoming an animal” a reality.

WATCH THE VIDEO ABOVE: Locals react to Japanese man disguised in a realistic dog suit.

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He has shared his unique journey with millions of people around the world, but fearing ridicule by those who know him in real life, he uses the name Toco on YouTube.

“I only told people who are really close to me,” he wrote in subtitled videos on the platform.

“If I told the people I work with that I wanted to be an animal, they would look at me funny.”

Many of his videos have been viewed millions of times, and his YouTube channel — I want to be an animal — spells out Toco’s lifelong dream to 43,000 subscribers.

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“I wonder whether it was a desire for transformation,” Toco told Zeppet, the company which created the suit, according to its website.

“To materialise the fancy, I decided to order a bodysuit in the shape of a real dog.”

In subtitles shared in YouTube footage, Toco said: “I have had a vague dream of becoming an animal since I was a child.”

“I remember writing in my grade school graduation book that I wanted to be a dog and walk outside.”

That became a reality when Toco took his first walk in public as a dog last year, waving in a human manner to passers-by with his new furry paws.

He hasn’t shared exactly how the internal mechanics of the suit work and while Toco demonstrated some typical canine mannerisms, his “quadrupedal locomotion” was slightly less convincing.

While walkers stopped to enjoy the rare sighting, footage of the moment appears to show other pets maintaining their scepticism from a distance.

A custom-made dog suit costing more than $20,000 has fulfilled a man’s dream of ‘becoming an animal’. Credit: ZeppetToco went for his first walk in public as a collie last month, overcoming his fear after more than a year with the suit. Credit: YouTube

Toco has had his costume for more than a year, but it took some time before he could walk in public with the suit.

“I don’t have the courage to do so,” he has previously said.

The suit was a custom design based on Toco’s favourite breed of dog, which was also selected as the model for the bodysuit “because of its size”.

“The size gap with humans is not large (which) was also a deciding factor,” he said

Zeppet met with Toco and facilitated fitting sessions, and the final product was produced for 2,000,000 yen ($A21,148) within 40 days, according to the company’s website.

“Creating a four-legged model for a two-legged human is extremely tricky, as our skeletal structure is quite different from (that of) canines,” Toco said in a customer review on the website. “I was therefore naturally worried about how it would turn out.

“After various trials and errors (in) the studio, however, the final result was brilliant.”