Good name for a dog?

write-stuff said:
I could name him Piper, but one of my neighbors already named his kid that.
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My Yellow Lab/GSD mix was named Piper. Fantastic dog. My current dog is named "Otto" after the VOR in NM. At one point, we had a dog named Baron as well.

I like picking either an airplane type or a navaid. A Navaid seems more likely to be unique.
 
Where to begin. I do quite a bit of rescue work, and name all the dogs I find with an aviation-related name. Sadly, most of them don't stick when the new owner gets a hold of it. Anyway, here's the list of all of mine I've had:

Bo (although not all that uncommon even for non-aviation folks)
Rudder
Aileron
Rotax
NACO
Jeppesen
Roger Wilco
Cirrus
Diamond
Piper
CAVU
Zenith (Called him Zen for short)
Garmin
Boeing
Embraer
Antonov
LAHSO
Canard
Squak

There's probably some I'm forgetting at the moment. Needless to say, I like odd names. They're great conversation starters with the ladies at the dog-park.
 
I usually call my animals by their generic genus or specie names. I've had several birds named "Bird," a few dogs named "Dog," and a whole bunch of cats named "Cat." This system worked well until I got two turtles, who I call "T-1" and "T-2."

A few years ago I came across a lost dog (with a collar, but no tag or license) who chose me out of all the people in Queens to help her find her humans. I wasn't surprised, because animals seem to like me, for whatever odd reason. So I took her home, bathed her, fed her, and so forth; and in the meantime I put her picture on Craigs List and on some lost pet site, and hung signs around the 'hood.

It actually was a couple of weeks until her humans got in touch with me. They were from Westchester County, and they'd lost the dog during their last trip to College Point. They'd left her asleep in the back seat of the car with the window open while they were in a store, and they were already over the Whitestone Bridge on their way back to Westchester by the time they realized she was gone. The next time they came back to Queens, they saw the poster I'd put in the window of a friend's store, and they called me. The dog's name was Sasha, and she went mad happy when she heard the lady's voice over the phone. They came right over and picked her up. It was a very touching reunion.

I was actually quite surprised that Sasha never tried to find her way back home. Westchester county wasn't far away at all: Dogs have been known to find their way home from much greater distances. But for whatever reason, she stayed with me; although she did seem to whimper once in a while, as if she missed her family. I talked to her about it and explained the things I'd done to try to help her find her humans, though, and I believe that dogs have more understanding of what we say to them than we give them credit for. So maybe she understood what was going on.

Oh, yeah. Dog names. While Sasha was with me before I knew her name, I tried a bunch of common dog names, but she didn't respond to any of them. So I simply called her "Dog," which she answered to. Even when I was first taking her home to my house, and she seemed a bit confused as to whether or not I wanted her to follow me, I turned around and commanded, "Dog, come!" and she came. I then tried, "Dog, heel," but she seemed confused; so I tried, "Dog, with me," and she heeled all the way back to my place.

I've had that happen a lot, actually, with dogs that I didn't know. If you address a dog as "Dog," at least half the time the dog will respond. I guess they know that they're dogs from hearing their humans refer to them that way in the third person: "Where's the dog," "Go walk the dog," Did you feed the dog," and so forth. Again, I think they're smarter than most folks give them credit for.

-Rich
 
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