How do you name your dog? You can name it something more embarrassing than you can name a child, but you have to be able to call the name loudly and rapidly in public so you can't go too nuts. After characters in books, movies, music? After places or mountains? (I met a Rott named Denali and that was *perfect.*)

-- Anonymous, April 20, 2000

Answers

You really have to wait until you get the dog. Doc was absolutely supposed to be a Jack (so I could later acquire a Lily and a Rosemary), but he just wasn't a Jack and he screwed up my whole scheme. Jeremy wanted to name him Hectoro after a character in a book, but he wasn't a Hectoro or even a Hector, either.

(And then I read the book and I didn't want my dog named after Hectoro, anyway.)

We made lists of names suggested by other people, from dog naming web sites, from baby naming web sites, and ones we just came up with. I can't believe Doc was the one that stuck, but it works pretty well.

-- Anonymous, April 20, 2000

I felt myself going off topic in The Name Game thread, so I took it here (because pets and humans should be named with different principles in mind, sez me).

I want to name my eventual dog Blajeny (Madeleine L'Engle, The Wind in the Door) and call it Jenny, but Rich wants to name it Brett. We that mistake (one syllable, not ending in -ie) with Blake (whom we call Buddy, to remedy the mistake) and I'm not going to reproduce it on a dog just to coddle his The Sun Also Rises fetish, and Jake is overused. He also likes the name Alejandra (All the Pretty Horses), which is lovely but not a functional dog name. Brett has the advantage of being more unisex (I wouldn't like calling a male dog Jenny), but still, it doesn't work.

I don't know how my parents named Belle, but they named Sagittarius for her astrological sign and called her Sagi and my sister named our next, also black, dog Shadow. Stanley the basset hound, Gretel the dachshund, Igor the Russian rabbithound (ie a mutt) all suited the individual dogs. Sam, Max, Jake, Cody, Harley, Bailey, and Casey are all popular names. How have you decided?

-- Anonymous, April 20, 2000

My only "rule" for pet naming is that it be one or two syllables that are easy to yell, and that's really only for dogs. Other than that I just try to find something that suits the pet's personality.

I usually pick human names--Harry (dog), Ralph (dwarf hamster), Cullen (cockatiel). Our current dog is Smidge--her name when we adopted her was Midnight, but she wouldn't answer to it. We didn't really like it anyway. We played around with some of the letters in midnight and came up with smidge (she's mostly black with "smidges" of white on her chest and paws).

Other pets I didn't name--Calvin and Hobbes (ferrets), Daisy, Fred, and Jennie (dogs), Piggy (cat).

Does anyone else have names they save until a pet fits it? My mom has wanted a dog named Rex for decades, but it never worked for any of her/our dogs.

-- Anonymous, April 20, 2000

We waited a couple of weeks to name our dog. One week it was Barkley, one week it was Logan, another week it was god knows what. I'm sure it confused him, but every name we came up with just didn't fit him. Adding to the confusion: we got him when he was 8 months old, rescued from a shelter, but apparently had a very loving home beforehand. They didn't know what his previous owner named him, so I'm sure he was WAY confused.

So he remained in name limbo until I went to our auto mechanic. His name is Bob Riley. Riley was the perfect name for our dog (an AmStaff). On day one, we knew that the name would stick, and two years later, he still responds to it.

My husband believes that all dog names should end in an "-ey" or a "y": like Riley or Maddy (our previous dog). I don't know where he got that notion, but when his mother got a Golden Retriever two months ago, I started suggesting names and hubby said all of them were wrong because they didn't end on that "ee" sound. Apparently, all his dogs from childhood had that "ee" sound at the end of their names: Trini, Rusty, okay, there was Boris, but he was the anomaly. His mother settled on Cady, which was odd at first, but is a great name once I got used to it. I asked his mother, "You're naming her after Elizabeth Cady Stanton?" My husband said, "Who's that?"

Cady, Cady, every bit the lady. And she is. Huh. If I had a daughter, I would have named her Cady if there wasn't a dog in the family with the same name.

-- Anonymous, April 20, 2000

My favorite dog name ever was "DiOHjee" (accent on the middle syllable). Because its owner spoke fluent Japanese, I assumed it was a foreign dog name. Only after a few weeks did I finally figure out that she was spelling out "D-O-G."

-- Anonymous, April 20, 2000

My family goes with "people names" for the pets. Actually, that's not true. Our dog (a goofy but sweet Bassett Hound, see picture here) is named Bridgette. My mother's father wanted her to name one of her daughters Bridgette and she never did, so we gave the name to the dog. On the other hand, my rabbit is named Mercutio the Silly Phantom. I swear. Don't go with a name like that, though, because Merc gets laughed at a lot for that one. And my little brother has a rabbit named Snow Blizzard. This sounds terrible, but maybe it's easier to give rabbits stupid names.

I always liked sort of cute, innocent names for dogs: Maggie and Emily and Emma.

Just out of curiousity, do people actually name their dogs Fido?

Oh, and a little girl down the street got a puppy for her sixth birthday. She named him Puppy Woof-Woof. No joking.

(flightless)

-- Anonymous, April 20, 2000

Liz, that is a beautiful dog.

I always name cats with names ending in "-ie" or "y." Vinnie, Rudy, Annie, Benny, Molly, and Sally. The exceptions were Felicia and Spike, and they didn't work out at all (the names OR the cats).

We tried very hard to come up with an "-ie" name for Doc, but it just didn't work. I liked Roby (after the name of the woman who owned our house before us) or Jackie (yes, after Jackie Robinson), but the "-ie" names were not working for Jeremy. It all works out in the end, though; now we generally call the dog "Dummy." (We promise not to do that with a human child.) I call him "Stupid Dummy Stupidhead" when he steals my underwear, but he doesn't seem to mind.

I realized a few weeks ago that I should have named the dog Nathan, Jr. I've started calling him that a lot: "Hang on, Nathan, Jr., we gonna go get Daddy." "Hey, there, Nathan, Jr." "Drop that baby, you warthog from hell!"

Okay, I don't really say that last one, but I will the next time he digs up my garden. "Drop that rosebush, you warthog from hell!"

(Raising Arizona. For those of you who were confused.)

-- Anonymous, April 20, 2000

"Does anyone name their dog Fido?"

Yeah, my dad. Only the spelling was a little innovative: Phydeau. The dog's given name was Tye, after Buster Brown and Tye. Dad, however, decided he liked Phydeau better so the poor animal was called Tye, Tired, Tidy, Phydie, Phydeau, White Fang, or Chopper. My father's sense of humor ran to asking llama owners if they named any of their animals Dolly. You don't want to know what he called us kids.

-- Anonymous, April 20, 2000

Our Maltese terrier was called Fluffy. That was the name her previous owner gave her, we got her when she was two years old, and we thought of renaming her but we decided against it. Fluffy was a good name for her, it fitted her well, and ever since then if we see someone go past with a Maltese terrier, we never think "oh, there's a Maltese" but "oh, there's a Fluffy". If I was ever to get a Hungarian Puli for a pet (does anyone here have one of those?) and if it was a male I'd call him Attila. Otherwise, I don't know what name I'd give to a dog, and anyway we're more likely to get another Maltese if we ever got another dog at all. Probably we'd call her Fluffy as well, too

-- Anonymous, April 21, 2000

I think you should name the dog Miranda or Oliver. Randy or Ollie are perfectly good dog names.

-- Anonymous, April 21, 2000

I really like that Nathan, Jr. thing.

-- Anonymous, April 21, 2000

I like to have a pet for a while and then the name that suits them just sticks after you try a few different ones. My boyfriend recently adopted two cats named Crissy and Tom. We didn't like either of those names, so after a week, they became Pepper (aka Pepper Pot, Pepperoni) and Vinny (aka Vincenzo, Vinny the Paw). Pepper because we were thinking of different spice names (like Ginger or Cinnamon), and Vinny because we were watching The Sixth Sense, and the character Vincent, but Vincent is too big of a name for Vinny. My cats are Punkin and Frisky.

I tend to like names ending with the *ee* sound also, although I did have a dog named Chico once. It just popped into my head and stuck.

-- Anonymous, April 21, 2000

I know I should get the dog before really pondering names, but I love knowing how people name their houses, boats, pets, and offspring, and I figured I'd get a few new ideas of *how* to name, if not the actual name.

We were going to name our first cockatiel Miranda, but not because of Randy Melendy. We set out to name the bird something Shakespearean. However, we adopted a male bird and he turned into Percy. I like the name Oliver, and then you could call the dog Ollie Ollie In For Free or whatever that is.

One of the best dog names I've known was Shandy: a drink more common in England or Australia than here, half beer and half lemonade or something equally nauseating. Shandy was half shepherd and half lab, so that was perfect for him.

I had suggested Laddie when Shandy's owners were debating his name. I like that name still, except it's too close to Lassie.

-- Anonymous, April 21, 2000

I've always wanted to name a black lab Fortinbras, after the dog in Madeleine L'Engle's books. I think Fort was a mutt but I like the name for a dog and 'Fort' seems to be a pretty simple thing to call out etc.

When I finally *do* get a black Lab that may seem completely inappropriate, but I hope not, becuase I really want to use it. I tend to agonize a lot over names, hoping for the magical one that has personal significance and just sounds right to come along. Sometimes this makes me get a bit too precious. I was getting desperate to name my cat, and while looking around my apartment for ideas I read the back of a vitamin bottle. Hence, my cat is named Molybdenum (Moly for everyday use). My trio of identical dwarf hamsters was named Clyde, Clyde, and The One That Bites. I named rats after astronomers -- Levy and Tabur. Names from books or technical terms from subjects I'm interested in seem to dominate.

-- Anonymous, April 21, 2000

Allie was first named Anastasia. This is what I named her when she came into the animal shelter because it fit. She was the only one of her siblings to survive. She was found in a sad and disasterous situation. Nobody knew who she really was.

By the time she was to be adopted out (after six weeks of ring worm treatment) we had all taken to calling her Chickie. Anastasia doesn't just roll of the tongue in animal shelter.

When we decided to keep her for ourselves we decided she needed a brand new name. We went back and forth until we finally settled on Allie. Short for Alaska.

The Gator part didn't come in for a while. One day on my way out I said, "See you later, Allie Gator." It stuck.

-- Anonymous, April 21, 2000

My brother wanted to name his cat Faravelli, but my mother said that wasn't a yell-from-the-doorstep kind of name, so he picked Chico instead.

Bonus points for guessing our family's style of pet naming.

-- Anonymous, April 21, 2000

I agree with the concept of having a dog's name end with the "EE" sound. It just rolls off the tongue well when yelling out a dog's name. However, there are occasions when an "EE" name just won't work for a dog. Enter my big bear looking dog, he's half german shepard, and half golden retriever (Ultra MUTT!!). We ended up naming him Cisco. Nicknames- Ciscoman, Nabisco Cisco, and Wolf dog.

This may sound extremely pathetic, but I also name my fish. I have 7 adult African cichlids, and chose to give them all mythological, or legendary names. Enter Hades, Neptune, Zeus, Orion, Mu, Jupiter, and Jupiter's "girlfish" Hera. The only thing about naming fish that kinda sucks is that you can't always determine the sex of a fish until it gets older and develops it's colors. So imagine my surprise when I discovered that the "king" of the tank-Zeus got knocked up and filled the 55g tank with baby images of HERself!! Oh well, u can't win em all! -Zhyla

-- Anonymous, April 21, 2000

Neither of our pets ever gets called by its given name. The cat, Epiphany, is forever Epi. Or Eps, Epilady, Epinepherine, Epitudinous, Tudes, Sheds-a-Lot, Sheds... you get the picture. And Hasenpfeffer, the rabbit, will be known for the rest of his life as Poopers.

So I guess my point is...name it whatever you want, just don't expect it to stick.

-- Anonymous, April 21, 2000

Rottweilers: Hogan-for Hogan's Heroes Quinte-named for my favourite horse who passed away Nike-her registered name was CH Von Rollin's Just Do It Amstel-imported from Germany and I thought this was a german beer Vegas-one of 3 pups to survive parvo from a 10 puppy litter Scooter-sister to Vegas; it just fit Marlo-came with her name...I hate it and mostly call her Barley now Madison-for Madison Square Garden (Westminster Dog Show) Memphis-came from co-breeder in Tennessee...next boy he gives me will be Elvis Pepsi-I sat up with the mom and then the pups for 3 weeks with no sleep and Diet Pepsi got me through it Kiwi-just liked it Dakota-just like it Tango & Cash-littermates I kept Wishbone & Jellybean-littermates I kept and let the kids name (!!)

Pugs: Rolex-saved enough for a watch, bought a dog instead Truffles-snorted like a little pig but breeder hated Porkchop, so this was second choice (and suits little miss priss to a 'T' now) Sally-came with name...I hate it and it will be changed shortly Dallas-for a long distance long who lived in Dallas

Poodles: Mercedes-ex BF picked, he is into cars Dior-she is a fashion queen/label whore after all Calypso-black standard who had dreadlocks when not brushed out

Mini Bull Terrier: Diesel-same ex BF as above...now that he is neutered we call him Diesel Dyke or Lipstick Lesbian depending on how girlie he is acting at the time

Whippet: Twiggy-my best attempt thus far

-- Anonymous, April 21, 2000

Ohmygawd! That raising Arizona ref almost got hot coffee blown all over the keyboard! You should warn people before doing that again Ms Beth!

I'm very partial to using Place names for dogs and Movie Character names for cats. My dog Shasta for example. One of the coolest dog names I've heard is for an english bulldog named Mogadishu, and they call him Deesh-dog. Also, over at It came from the Porch they have a cat named "Lilu Dallas Multipass", which is totally cool!

Here's a quote from the Monks of New Skete book, The Art of raising a Puppy:

"...Thus, the poetic qualities of the name, it's psychological associations, are important only for us and serve as a sign of our mental and emotional bond with our dog."

"..Instead of choosing human names for our dogs, we should select names that speak to a dog as a dog yet respect her own dignity and uniqueness."

"...In general, we recommend short, two syllable names that end in a long vowel or a soft a (for example, Nero, Anka, Ola) because they are clear and easy for the pup to distinguish."

I really recommend that book by the way! Those Monks are deep.

So, from my list of dog names: Murphy, Riley, Dashka, Zoe, Bailey, Cali, Chuy.

Good luck Lisa!

-- Anonymous, April 21, 2000

I have to agree that you really need to meet the dog (just like babies) before definitively deciding on the name. However, some breeds lend themselves to certain styles of names. Like the Dobie/Rottweiler mix named Artemis (the huntress). Some do better with cutesy or pun names. Some are dog-dog names.

I've renamed a shelter dog and left the shelter name on another. (The renamed dog was previously "Butter" which might explain why he answered to "Butthead" with no prompting. He was also dumb. Sweet, but dumb.) I do, however, prefer to keep human names, hopefully somewhat masculine, as I include the name on the answering machine. In fact, I listed my phone number under my old dog's first name and my last name for years -- it was cheaper than private listing, anyone who knew me could still call information for my number, and it really helped weed out telephone solicitors. I still get credit card applications in his nam

-- Anonymous, April 21, 2000

I totally forgot one requirement that no one else has mentioned. All animal names must appear in songs. That's the main problem with "Doc." All animals need a song that you can sing to them while they're following you around the kitchen hoping you'll drop some food, so you can pretend that they're actually attracted to your melodic voice and magical personality.

So we have "Lay Down Sally" and any song that mentions "Long Tall Sally," "Tutti Frutti (Oh, Rudy)," "Ruby Ruby" (because it can be easily modified into "Rudy Rudy"), and the very unfortunate "Benny and the Jets."

"Rudy Rudy" is the most satisfactory of these, obviously.

-- Anonymous, April 21, 2000

If you are a dog park person, you may want to make sure your dog's name isn't the same as all the others. When I lived in Davis I went to a dog park when 50% of the dogs were named Bailey or Sasha.

-- Anonymous, April 21, 2000

Friend of mine named his dog Kharma, so he could yell "Bad Kharma!"

-- Anonymous, April 21, 2000

I'm picking up my whippet tomorrow and I thought I wanted to name him Jack, but Beth, now Ollie is really growing on me. This is hard!

-- Anonymous, April 21, 2000

I currently have two male rotts right now. We didn't get them at the same time, so when I named the first one I was really into naming him after a Greek god. After about three days of going through names, I decided on Ares, the Greek god of war. It really fits him now because he's incredibly temperamental and destructive, but I still love him. When we got the second one, we decided to stick with the Greek god names. We also thought it would be good to stick with an "A" name. So, we decided on Apollo (short for his registered name of Apollo's Best Shot). We had rejected Apollo for Ares because we thought it might be too common, but it grew on us. It turns out that it really fits this dog like Ares' name fits him because Apollo is a little more sensitive and sweet with Apollo being the God of the sun, music, archery, and medicine.

Most people know where Apollo comes from, but the best part is when people know that Ares is not for the astrological sign but for the Greek god. I really liked naming them after mythological gods because, to me, it put some meaning behind the names and the dogs really grew into them.

Cats on the other hand is a totally different story. We have three cats named Gypsy, Tom, and Kitten. Kitten was mine that I got when I moved here to Chicago and I had decided to name her Chicago but it never stuck and we just kept calling her "the kitten." So, now, when she's 5 years old, we'll still be calling her Kitten.

-- Anonymous, April 21, 2000

I had a friend in high school that named her dog "Dumbass Bitch" that was a weird family. She also named her cat Bitch, I wonder what happened at feeding time.

I usually go with human names that have some sort of meaning to me or my husband. The easier to yell the better.

-- Anonymous, April 21, 2000

Hmmm - you could name the dog after the doggie constellation ... or is that a single star? The dog-star?

Anyway -- Sirius is the name of the star/constellation.

As for pet-naming. Our cats all started out with certain names but rapidly acquired nicknames, for something even as simple as the quite traditional, Tiger.

Our first cat, Sabs wanted to name after Shere Khan, the tiger in the Jungle Book, but I thought that sounded too masculine for a lady-cat, so we modified it to Shara Khan.

Shara is still mostly called Shara, except when she gets affectionately dubbed "Sharsky" (with the attendent mental joke of Sharsky n' Hutch. Or Shar-Shar.

Sasha got her name because the name makes me think of spunkiness. Since she was the first to jump out of the kitten-area when she was a baby, spunky seemed to fit. Since then she's gotten a lot more dainty and sedate, but her full name is still Sasha Flufftail. She is also nicknamed, Sha-sha (Chat-chat) (Gabor), La Cha-cha, and Princess.

Mephisto was originally a nickname for Mephistopheles, Sabs' name of choice for the "one black kitten we're keeping." From Mephisto came Mephisto Fishface, Fishface and Fishy/Phishy. The fabulous Mr. Mephistopheles only answers to Mephisto and Fishy these days.

Tiger Toebiter. Tiger was my original name for the little guy who popped out and made a voracious beeline for his mother's teats. I was addressing his fierceness and it seemed appropriate at the time. When he developed a fondness for biting my toes under the covers, he earned his second name, Toebiter. Affectionately he is addressed as Tig, or Tiggy, Tigra or Tigre or Tigray.

When Pearl arrived on our front stoop begging for a morsel, we were amazed at how clean she was, even though there was hardly any flesh left on her tiny frame. We considered many names having to do with whiteness, from Snow on downward. Sabs came up with Pearl and my co-worker suggested that we spell it Perl, since I'm a web developer and use that language to code pages from time to time. Sometimes I am rather fond of the idea of spelling it Prrrl, since the little missy has a big rumbly purr similar to Mephistos. Pearl is rarely nicknamed on the short side. Rather, we've taken to extending her name ... Pearl-li-tay for example, Pearl-girl and Whitestuff, to name a few.

Hence, it seems to me that pets grown into their names. You can make an initial decision, but invariably, other names and nicknames will evolve from that choice.

-- Anonymous, April 21, 2000

when i was growing up we had two dogs, Penny and Dave. Dave was a chihuahua. My mother, who was teaching at a Catholic grade school at the time, named him that because a student of hers couldn't name all the apostles and wrote "Dave" on a test. Dave died and we got Nickel (get it?). Now we just have her. we call her Nickie.

I have always wanted to have an animal named Spork. I think Spork would be a good name for a ferret for some reason.

-- Anonymous, April 22, 2000

Mungo. [After St. Mungo, the patron saint of Glasgow]. It's a great name.

-- Anonymous, April 23, 2000

I think you have to meet a pet before you name him/her. I usually go by looks. My cat is called Jack O'Lantern because he's pumpkin colored. And the cat I had before him was called Calico because (surprise!) she was a calico. Though the cat before her (her mom) was called K.C. for Keepers' Cat. Keepers was the guy who gave her to me. I've only had one dog, and her name was Lady. Surprisingly, a lot of people still called he

-- Anonymous, April 23, 2000

I like eric's idea of the double sylable thing--I'd name my dog lyla(if I had one,and if it were a she)after my guardian angel.

-- Anonymous, April 24, 2000

This is one of my all-time favorite stories.

We knew we were getting our golden before he/she was born, and we were pretty much set on Hunter if the pup was a male, Daphne (I think) for a female. In any event, the pups were born, we picked out the biggest male and visited him quite often, anxious for the 7th week mark when we could bring him home.

Just 2-3 mornings before the big day, I woke up, sat straight up in bed, looked at the hub and said, "We need to name that pup Kennedy."

We went around and around about it, but in the end, I won out (good thing...it took me 10 yrs. to talk him into GETTING a dog), Kennedy it was.

However...

we call him anything but. He's Kenners, Kenny-dog, Hairbag, Doopy-dawg, Oopie-doop...and several other nicks.

I always intended to get a cat and name her Marilyn, but that didn't work out. We adopted a Himmie named Jazz. She goes by the names Mamma-Kitty, MizKitty, Hairball (as in "Hairbag & Hairball, Inc.") and MizGirl.

Care to take a guess what mine & the hub's names are?

-- Anonymous, April 24, 2000

Hey, Muffet, if you're buying a Whippet, Devo would be a cool name. Whippet, good!

-- Anonymous, April 24, 2000

My goldfish is called Bonkers. A perfect name for a dog would be 'Keep away from those plants!', 'Get off that couch!' or 'Get out of the kitchen!'

-- Anonymous, April 25, 2000

I heard from a dog trainer once that dog names should have a hard consonant and an "ee" sound because dogs can hear those sounds easier than, say, b d or t sounds. Also that dog names should be two syllables, for the same reason.

I had a dog named Curly.

My favorite pet name ever was my ex's Red-tailed Colombian Boa Constrictor. Her name was Ssssssimone de "Boa"-voir.

-- Anonymous, April 25, 2000

When I first got my two 4 month old lab pups, I named them Delilah and Jezebel. Oof. Didn't take too long to change *that.* Labs need unpretentious names, IMO. My old roommate had a golden retriever named Tosca, fer godsakes.

I used to know a wonderful dog named Dolly, and I wanted to keep the two names easy to pair up, so they became Dolly and Daisy. I ended up giving Daisy away, and her adoptive family kept her name.

Dolly gets called "Dolly Madison Cupcakes!" when she's not paying attention to me. (Gotta say that with the proper sound of exasperation.) I also call her Doodlebug, derived from Dolly-wolly-doodle-all-the-day, Dogface, Doglips, and many other endearments too disgusting to mention. She is the world's greatest dog.

My 6 year old cat's named Noel. I wanted to name her Spike, but I was shouted down, and she was a Christmas present. (My mom suggested "Wrapping Paper." No wonder I'm in therapy.) She gets called Kitty Rat, Ratnip, and Tubby. She is slowly getting used to the idea of the dog, and even condescends to play with Doll occasionally.

Between the cat and the dog, I am awash in animal hair. It looks like I'm manufacturing dogs in my kitchen, even though I sweep every day. *sigh* It's worth it. I'm going through a really rough time right now, and I don't know what I'd do if I didn't have my buddies.

-- Anonymous, April 25, 2000

My boxer's name is Oliver.

It totally fits him.

And my husband does the Ollie, Ollie, thing.

-- Anonymous, April 25, 2000

Damnation, you stole my idea! I was going to get a whippet and call it "Good!"

*mutter*

-- Anonymous, April 26, 2000

When I was a kid, we aquired a mutt that my geeky brother wanted to name Albert, after Albert Einstein. After it was pointed out to him that Albert was a girl, he chose the obvious feminine version of Albert: Albatross.

Albatross was the best dog ever. We sometimes called her Trossie, but I can still clearly hear the cadence of her full name shouted across the vacant lot to get her to come running.

I like dogs named after other animals. My brother now has a cat named Maus.

-- Anonymous, April 26, 2000

There's a rumour going round this forum that Dreama's a good name ...

-- Anonymous, April 27, 2000

When we got our first dog, he was a golden retriever that had more of a reddish coloring, and he was already named Baron. When we decided to get a puppy, my mom named the black lab Duke. So of course, when my sisters oh so wonderful boyfriend decided to get her a female black lab puppy for christmas (without telling my parents), she was named Duchess. (My mother swore that they would get rid of that dog. Who of course now, two years later, sleeps at the foot of my mom's bed)

-- Anonymous, April 28, 2000

My mom has a Puli (the small Hungarian sheepdog breed with full length dreadlocks) called Marley. This leads to much delight on the streets, especially in West Indian neighbourhoods, although Mom was a little worried when a teenager asked her if the dog was named after Ziggy. Then again, Mom swears if she had known what her personality was going to be, she would've called her Whoopi. A good friend of mine has an African pygmy hedgehog called Lady Brillo.

-- Anonymous, April 30, 2000