Plenty.
In my case it explains why I celebrate Frankie’s birthday on the 4th of July.
Frankie is a rescue and he came prenamed, after the golf partner of his rescuer’s husband. Frankie’s not a duffer-type pup — although he has been known to pee on the greens at resort courses — but the name nevertheless suited the little guy to a tee. So I kept it.
But of course it turned out to just be the base for the riffs I play on it. Frankie soon became Frankie Doodle, a spin on Yankee Doodle, because I thought he was dandy. And, as the chorus of the George M. Cohan song goes,
I‘m a Yankee Doodle Dandy,
A Yankee Doodle, do or die;
A real live nephew of my Uncle Sam’s,
Born on the Fourth of July.
Not everyone comes with prenamed dogs, however, which leads me to dispense some advice (adapted from Chapter 2 of – shameless self promotion alert — AM I BORING MY DOG, forthcoming from Alpha/Penguin in September).
Entire books have been devoted to dog names, replete with etymologies. According to a Dogster.com survey, the most common labels for today’s trendy pup are:
For girls: Lucy, Bella, Daisy, Molly, Maggie, Chloe, Sophie, Lola, Bailey, Roxy.
For boys: Buddy, Max, Jake, Charlie, Rocky, Jack, Bailey, Toby, Buster, Bear
But it’s best to find a name that fits the personality and appearance of the actual dog who has taken up residence with you.
Along with sussing out the suitability of a name to your dog’s looks and personality, other factors to consider are:
- You will be using the name in public.
Although Sweetcheeks might be endearing at home, you run the risk of humiliation — and of having unsavory strangers respond — if you use it when you’re shopping with your Maltese in Home Depot.
Be careful, too, of sound-a-likes. My friend Clare had always liked the name Venus, which suggested both strength and beauty — until, that is, she heard it used on the beach. It took a while for her to realize that the dog’s owner wasn’t attempting to summon a male sex organ.
The converse holds true, too — that is, you might regret choosing a name primarily for its public effect. I’d always wanted to call a dog “Stella” no matter what the gender — so I could bellow down the street a la Stanley Kowalski. Never mind that I’m not generally a bellower and that not everyone has seen A Streetcar Named Desire. I was convinced it would be an endless source of amusement for me and everyone I encountered.
Luckily, I was saved from my worst instincts when I got a prenamed dog.
Lots of people think it’s funny to call their Chihuahuas “Tiger” or their Great Danes “Tiny.” One man I pass while walking Frankie always says “Hi, Killer” to my shy, pint-sized guy. I was amused maybe the first 10 times he did it, not so much after that.
- Pop culture references also get dated, fast.
Except in the case of Elvis. I personally know two canine Elvises (Elvi?) whose owners are generations apart.
- A name shouldn’t be too long or complex.
Dogs have fairly short attention spans when it comes to language (as opposed to food; your dog’s gaze might remain fixed on your plate for the entire duration of your dinner). By the time you’re done saying “Titus Andronicus” or “Princess Grace,” your dog will have stopped looking at you and returned to licking his or her privates. One or two syllables — anything you can shout quickly in an emergency — should suffice.
- A name should not sound too similar to a command.
If you name a dog Don, for example, he will either spend a lot of time in a down stay position or look at you quizzically whenever you try to put him in one.
- A name should not sound too much like that of a noncanine member of your family.
Unless, of course, you discover that the similarity helps resolve a child’s discipline issues.
- A name shouldn’t be chosen as a tribute to someone who’s still alive.
What might seem like a good idea in puppyhood can turn dicey if the dog becomes fat and flatulent. It’s also a good idea to steer clear of the recently departed, lest relatives feel their kin has been disrespected.
Wyatt Earp’s dog’s lookalike
Forgive me for this post’s title. It’s an in joke, a spin on the perhaps apocryphal story told to me by Arizona historian Jim Turner, who wrote yesterday’s post about Wyatt Earp’s dog. According to Turner, an editor once observed that the most popular topics for readers are the civil war, pets, and medicine, so the perfect — as in most marketable — story would be about President Lincoln’s doctor’s dog.
If the title is dubious, the comparison between historic and modern dog is legitimate. When I asked on my favorite message board, Twitter, if anyone could identify the breed of Wyatt Earp’s dog, I got an answer from Jen Kirby, a long distance pal — and talented artist – who lives in the UK. Jen knew that Earpie was a border collie mix, she wrote, because she used to have a dog that looked exactly like him: Trixie.
Trixie was quite a character — and not in a good way, for the most part. The wily and combative canine might have been perfect for Wyatt Earp in his rowdier days.
By the time she was four months old, Trixie had grown larger than her own mother, Molly, whom she began bullying — which is how Jen came to acquire her. Trixie’s original owner was Sally Miles, an actress who suffered from motor neuron disease and used a wheelchair. It soon became clear that Sally couldn’t handle the obstreperous pup. Sally knew that her neighbor, Jen, would be kind to Trixie, no matter how badly she behaved.
In public, Trixie was a dream. “She was wonderful with dogs we met on walks and never got into fights with them,” Jen says. At home, it was another story: “She attacked any dog who came to our house more than twice.” Trixie even attacked Tiggy, the male Border Collie already resident at Jen’s house. “She attacked him while I was out,” Jen reports. “I found out from the big bite holes behind Tiggy’s shoulder blades.”
Jen had also observed Trixie’s stealth methods with other friends’ dogs. Trixie, she says, “had a way of coming up from behind, rubbing herself ‘affectionately’ alongside the other dog until she was in position to sink her teeth into their backs.”
Almost no dog, no matter how mild-mannered and unthreatening, was spared Trixie’s predations. “My parents got a border collie called Sonsie, from the Robert Burns poem with the dog with the sonsie face [The Twa Dogs],” Jen says. “She was a rescue dog and an absolute angel. My mother brought Sonsie to visit for a few days once and it was OK. Next time Mum visited with Sonsie, Trixie attacked. Her ambition seemed to be ‘Kill Sonsie.’”
But Trixie finally met her match with Bran, a German Shepherd dog that Jen rescued. Bran “took one look at her, weighed her character up, and took her head quite gently in his jaws.” Trixie whimpered and after that always behaved with Bran. At least when Bran was present. Trixie “didn’t dare eat Bran’s dinner while he was in the house, but she used to pretend to wee in the garden and eat his dinner while he was looking for the wee to ‘cover.’”
Speaking of bathroom habits, Trixie never was really housetrained. Because her original owner, Sally, was in a wheelchair, Trixie stayed in the kitchen, with access to the outside via a dog door, during the day. As a result, she primarily knew a hard floor inside, grass outside. “Once I got her home,” Jen says, “I realised she thought that carpet and fabric were the same as grass.” The dog did have a urinary revelation, however. “One day Trixie followed me up to the bathroom and saw me using the WC. Her little eyes lit up, as though to say, ‘so this is where you do it.’ And she squatted in front of me. You could practically see the cartoon light bulb over her head!”
As the mean often do through sheer orneriness, Trixie lived to a great age. Despite everything, Jen says, “I was grateful to her for helping Bran as he had dreadful separation anxiety and hated to let me out of his sight.”