Photo of "Gentleman Jack" by Fred R. Conrad for The New York Times
A front page article in today's Home and Garden section of The New York Times has a few things to say about that very personal practice of naming your dog, by comparison to say, naming your children. In fact some of the recommendations from "experts" quoted in the article fly in the face of our culture's current practices. For example, remember way back when we named our dogs "Fido", "Rover" and "Spot" (were real dogs ever given these names)? Then when our canine companions moved inside our homes and became more a part of our family, we gave them human names, like "Sophie", "Benjie" and "Marley".
But some object to this practice: The Monks of New Skete, a monastic community in upstate New York who breed German Shepherds and are know for their dog training books, advises against human names because humans tend to anthropomorphize dogs with human names (makes sense, doesn't it), which according to them "is a formula that invites big problems."
If nothing else, enjoy this article for the stunning pictures of dogs...with unique names, human or otherwise.
But we'd love to hear how you chose the name of your current (or one of your past) doggies. Let us know!
But some object to this practice: The Monks of New Skete, a monastic community in upstate New York who breed German Shepherds and are know for their dog training books, advises against human names because humans tend to anthropomorphize dogs with human names (makes sense, doesn't it), which according to them "is a formula that invites big problems."
If nothing else, enjoy this article for the stunning pictures of dogs...with unique names, human or otherwise.
But we'd love to hear how you chose the name of your current (or one of your past) doggies. Let us know!
4 comments:
Bailey and Katy are both rescues so they came by there names in different ways. Bailey is used as both a boy and girl name, although more commonly a girl name which creates confusion since he's a boy. He came to us from rescue as a puppy and was already responding to commands with his name. It seemed wise to keep his name.
Katy had another name, but it was long and she wouldn't answer it. In fact the only word she responded to at all was cookie. It was clear she needed a new name and one with a hard "C" sound seemed like a great option. So after trying out a series of hard "C" names Katy was the one she seemed to respond to best and that was what we registered her with on her licence.
We have had a few dogs - the german shepard was Hazzard (wanna guess when we had him??) and the shiba inu was Bandit based on his markings.
Max was Max from the shelter and had been fostered with that name for a long time so Max it's stayed although my Dad's memory is slipping so he now also gets called Hector and Harold which he ONLY responds to if my Dad calls him! Gotta love that special little bond :)
Eva's name came from the movie WALL-E as Rosie thinks the way Wall-E called EVA is cute and Mika from the F1 driver because we were his fan :)
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