(2021-01-28 5:37)WolfdogPaws Wrote: [ -> ]I think there can be plenty of reasons one will identify as a therian (psychologically,) and that we don't need to find one single cause, because everyone's experience is different.
That said, I think that a common reason (and what I attribute my therianthropy to,) is something that starts as a connection to a certain species for whatever reason. This could be due to how you grew up with this species, how you see it portrayed in media, or it is something that you just happened to like a lot, and became connected to it in that way (or a mix of these.) Then, because of how much you connected to it, your brain adopts the traits of it.
I think this is a reason for there being so many feline and canine therians, because those are the most popular kinds of animals in our society (generally.)
This is definitely how my therianthropy occurred. I was in love with dogs as a kid, to the point that I might as well have been one, (well, I guess I kinda was!) and my brain adopted those instincts and traits. Then, later I was exposed to wolves in the media/on the internet, and that further influenced me, building off of my dog self, to be a Wolfdog.
I don't mean this to say that we are just pretending to be another species, our theriotypes are very real parts of us, because I think that is just how our brains have come to naturally think. 
Do you think this is possibly a cause for your therianthropy? If not, I'd love to hear what other people think caused their therianthropy, and also any other feedback on this theory!
(Again, I don't think this is the sole cause for therianthropes, just possibly a common one!)
I definitely can see a correlation in my life. I grew up closely connected with animals but absolutely was a die hard for nature documentaries and the warrior cat series in my formative years. I would say they and my rocky past influenced my interests which molded into this! I definitely adopted some of the traits I saw/read about but I also always had some of the urges/traits every since I was a baby so to me its a bit of influence and just who I am. Like the nurture and nature but for being Therian
I'm not sure what you mean by being in love with dogs, to the point that you might as well have been one.
In my point of view, being in love with dogs is one of the consequences of my therianthropy, not the cause. If I wasn't so lucky, I might never have had one. Still, it is totally plausible that one can be a therian without having had pets. Besides, where does loving something touch your personality traits? No matter how much effort you do at loving something, you will never achieve the state of mind of the thing you love. According to my personal beliefs, being in love with something is fine, but I don't think it equals a chance to become the subject of your love. Therianthropy is something you were born with. With a pet, chances are higher that you might discover this part to yourself quicker.
Media might affect you similarly, too. Characters we relate to on a personal level affect us, might just push us to explore our deeper connection even better, but that's more of a lightbulb experience, to me.
I'm just saying that nowadays we don't have dogs anymore at home, but even without them, I am still very much canine to some degree.
As with what Dusty said, I had lycanthropic behaviors before I ever could have "gotten" them from something. I have vivid memories of my first Halloweens because that's the first time I ever saw the concept of a wolf person in media—being werewolves. I was infatuated with them, but I didn't become werewolf-obsessed and get a bunch of werewolf stuff. In fact, it made me feel weird and like something I shouldn't be feeling, which is what lead to me bottling up all my therianthropic feelings until later.
I didn't have a dog until years after that, and even then my dog never brought me any therianthropic feelings, but perhaps it was because she's far too removed from my actual theriotype of wolves. If we got a bigger or more wolf-like dog, I'm not sure how I would have felt.
The reason I like media that depicts animals (or anthropomorphic animals) for a long time has felt like, well, there's some piece of me that longs for that. Like, I want to be that, and that's why I keep coming back to it. That's the funny feeling I get watching a werewolf transform, or similar.
I like coyotes now! They're quite handsome and they pop up in the most unexpected of places at times. Makes for some very fun and interesting pictures. But they were nowhere close to my favorite animals growing up. My family lived in a very rural area growing up, and there was a pack of coyotes that lived nearby. At night, sometimes they would yip and howl, and it drove me nuts, they interrupted my sleep! Plus our pet dogs were always very frightened of them, so I felt bad for the dogs.
I distinctly remember liking otters an incredible amount, and dragons because they were in all my fantasy books and they were intelligent but not human. We had dogs growing up, and I was very close with the family dog when I was young. But after he passed away, and we had new dogs, I wasn't so close to them; my dad mostly took care of them and feeding them and so on. I didn't interact with them much at all.