This chapter discusses the interplay between metaphorical discourses and understandings of leadership and, to a larger extent, human culture, through the analysis of participant interviews, the author’s experiences, and scholarship and anecdotes about the canine/human relationship. I provide an overview of the research and scholarship on the discourse of metaphor and related concepts, such as the physical embodiment of metaphorical discourse and how metaphors are a fundamental way human beings understand and articulate their understandings of not only leadership, but all aspects of their worlds. These analyses and reflections are contextualized within an interdisciplinary theoretical frame, drawing on key sources from linguistics, feminist studies, language studies, teacher education, and literature. I explore how metaphors and metaphorical language were important ways the participants engaged with their evolving leadership identities and described them to me in our interviews. I also discuss in more depth the origins and meaning of the metaphor in the book’s title, ‘identity portals,’ which originated in an interview with a participant. The chapter concludes with a discussion of how canine-human relationships can serve as metaphors for and exemplars of human leadership identities, as we both compare our dogs to ourselves and observe how their behavior is reflective of our own.