Opinion Post by Aly MacDonald, Precious Pooch Owner and Manager
Bob, Formerly the Sun God
Why It’s Okay to Rename Your Rescue Dog
Some years ago, my parents adopted an adult dog who had been abandoned at a boarding facility. His people had booked a week’s stay with the proprietor, and after the week was up, they did not return. After several attempts at contacting them, she began to worry. Months later, no owners in sight and having taken on the unexpected burden of his feeding and care, the boarder put him up for adoption. He was a mixed breed, approximately three years old.
His name, she said, was Apollo.
Apollo was gorgeous: he had silky, black fur and a tapered muzzle, with one half ear up and one dropped down, he was big enough to be intimidating but confident enough not to care about that sort of thing. He was a stunning animal. Sometimes, when he would sit out on our sloping back lawn, fur spread out around him like a southern lady in a hoop skirt, he was downright majestic.
The day we brought him home from the boarding facility, he gave no hesitation whatsoever. He was a smart dog; I believe that he knew that “his” people had left him there. He realized that we weren’t the ones he had originally expected, but we’d do just fine, thank you. Anything to get out of that crate. My parents took him home and renamed him Bob.
Why did this creature have to go from being named for the Sun God to the guy who worked at the local Bait N Tackle? It’s just the luck of the draw, I guess, but I’ll say this: I’d rather be Bob with a big back yard, belly full and petted, than Apollo abandoned in a crate.
Dogs do not name things—at least, not in any way that humans can measure. They make noises of course, even to each other, but science has explained that their interspecies communication is more largely based on body language and smell than on any kind of verbal language—and that’s the crux of the issue, really. Naming things is human.
“Apollo” was the noise that they used when calling him, the other people, the ones who had left him. But “Bob” was the noise that we used. It was what Daddy said when calling him in for dinner, it was the sound Mummy made when she gave him his night-time cookie. “Bob” was what I cooed when I loosely tied my ballet skirts around his middle.
Bob was better than Apollo, because Bob’s people loved him. Who wouldn’t rather be Bob?
Years later, as a grown woman, I rescued a puppy from the Navajo Nation outside of Flagstaff, Arizona. I have no idea what my dog called himself in his head, though “High Lord of the Desert and Bane of Small Animals” sounds about right. Surely, however, it wasn’t any of the nicknames I gave him over the years, like “Monkey,” or “Feastie Beastie, or “Señor Fuzzybutt,” or even his official moniker, “Cody.” Nevertheless, this badass coydog always knew when I was speaking to him, no matter what ridiculous words I used, no matter how inconsistent I was.
This innate understanding forms a large part of our bond with dogs. Through inflection, tone, body language, even the way the chemicals in our physiology change when we are talking to them—dogs know when we are speaking to them, no matter what particular combination of syllables we use.
Listen, if a pup is finding a home with you—whether they’re 3, 8, or even 15 years old— it’s absolutely okay to rename them to whatever makes you happy. As long as you make them happy, they will answer to anything. Literally, anything. Ask Señor Fuzzybutt. Ask Bob, who never heard the name of the Sun God again.
My point is, don’t feel bound by a dog’s past to keep a name that they had no hand in choosing. Call them what you will. If you love them, they will come.
The Author and Cody, AKA High Lord of the Desert and Bane of Small Animals
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