Naming Your Hound

My family has grown….by one. One furry, four-legged puppy of the golden retriever persuasion now occupies the Moore house. Or should I say, dominates it? The name, you ask?

Molly Sugar Moore (although I call her “Molly Hatchet”-after the rock band whose hit song “Flirtin’ With Disaster” seems to be apropos)

If there is anything cuter on earth than a golden retriever pup, I have yet to see it. Naming that hound was anything but cute, however. With two adults, two teens and an 8 year old all having to “agree” on the name, the process took over a week.

My advice? Go to the web and Google “dog names”. You’ll find dozens of sites with THOUSANDS of names! Make a list of the ones you would consider-this will take some time-and those that are out of the box, so to speak. Molly, being a female (bet you figured that out by now) ruled out many names more suited to male dogs. Personally, if the dog were a boy, I would go with “Fido”, since, although it seems to be the generic name for dogs, I have yet to come across an actual dog named “Fido”.

I also liked “Lasagna” (the food and the name), but Molly didn’t look like an Italian dish. So, we narrowed it down to “Maggie”, “Molly”, “Ellie”, “Haley”—and a few others. Our 8 year old wanted “Sugar” (and refused to compromise), so we allowed our hound a middle name. Despite the tearful dissention of said 8 year old, agreement on “Molly Sugar” was reached (if only because the rest of us were so tired of the process we would have named the dog Bathurst just to get it over with)

Now we have a name….and we need to use it often to get her used to it. She should hear it alot, which is why my brother-in-law quipped that his dog thought her name was….”Bad Dog!” since that’s what she heard most frequently. The accidents will happen, but it’s all worth it—to get the wagging tail and unconditional love that dogs bring.

“Good girl, Molly!”