Mutt’s in a
Name?: The Dog Blog
 |
| Nugget |
Names on the Fridge
So it’s not
a real stretch that I have begun to pay close attention to the dog names in my
life. What I am noticing is that dogs more
and more have people names. Instead of
Sport, Rover, Rocky, Lady, Tippy and Skipper---dog names from my distant past, the
dogs in my neighbourhood whom I see almost daily have people names. Brad, Ernie, Haley, Rosie. Sammy Davis Jr. lives on the next block and you
must use his entire name when addressing him.
Astrid Elizabeth Ann is a boxer who lives down the street; her friends
call her Astrid. Charlotte lives around
the corner. My mother’s name was
Charlotte. My middle name is
Charlotte. The new princess’ name is
Charlotte. And so is the West Highland
Terrier who lives around the corner.
Princess Charlotte and her Parents
Is it
because families have fewer kids that they use their favourite names for their
pets? Larry, Elvis, Ellie, Emma, Mabel, Basil, Doug. My dog
Nugget was already named when I adopted her.
Who knows, if she had been nameless, I may have called her Alice Munro
or Angela Merkl or Helen Mirren. She
looks more like an Alice than an Angela, I think.
Alice Munro
Angela Merkl
Helen Mirren
When I was a
kid, we always had a dog and he (or she) was always called Skipper. One Skipper would follow another
Skipper. This was mostly due to the fact that my
father would not call a dog anything else.
So if anyone in the family got creative and tried to call the new cow dog
Blue or Patches or Lassie, that name would not last more than a week. Because my father would never change, in order to avoid a totally confused dog with
an identity crisis, the dog's name inevitably reverted to Skipper, as in “Skipper, go
get the cows!” , "Sic ‘em Skipper!” , “Skipper, go lay down!” , “Skipper, get home.”
That would be the extent of the interaction my father had with the dog. You see while
I’m made of granite, as my family repeatedly tells me, my father was made of
cement laced with rebar. Not exactly
warm and fuzzy. Every animal on the farm
had a job; there were no pets. Skipper’s
job was to get the cows to the barn at milking time. Skipper the First, Skipper the Second, Skipper the Third ---same old
job. You get the picture. Skippers were never allowed in the house;
they slept in the porch and ate table scraps from an old tin pie plate with a
hole in the bottom.
Our Skippers had no
dish with their name on it, no poop bags, no leash, no collar, no ramp to get on
the bed, no doggy backpack, no stroller, no trips to the vet, no needles, no kangaroo
dog food, no dental work, no allergy tests, no flea medicine. If the dog got into a porcupine, one person
held his head down between the tines of a hayfork, and someone else pulled the
quills out with a pair of pliers. If the
dog got sick, you stopped feeding him for a while. If he got really sick, you called the
neighbour to come shoot him in the back pasture. Dogs did merit a grave, however.
Today's dogs are pampered and privileged compared to our Skippers. And I can’t
really say much. I have a pampered
privileged dog who eats kangaroo dog food and wears a coat, boots and a New Brunswick tartan ascot.
Nugget
What's more, I have a pampered privileged cat who is quite sure she deserves the
very best of everything, including several high-falutin’ names such as Josie,
Josee, Slippy, Ring-Tailed Snorter. She
acts more like an Elizabeth or a Victoria or a Sheba if you ask me.
Slippy and Julia
Slippy in her own Mind
