A Xinda by any other name would still be … adorable.
Last year 61 litters – 470 puppies — were born at the Seeing Eye breeding station. That’s a lot of puppies to name.
The Seeing Eye gives the dogs in each litter names that start with the same letter of the alphabet, and once a puppy is named, that name can’t be used again until that dog retires or is removed from the program. Right now 1710 people like me are getting around safely using Seeing Eye dogs, and only one of the working dogs is named Whitney.
What this means is that if I were to call the Seeing eye and tell them, say, that Whitney is starting to cross streets diagonally rather than going straight across, they know exactly who Whitney is –- they wouldn’t have to ask, “Remind me, is this the Whitney in Chicago or Whitney in Sioux Falls?” This also means that the Seeing Eye has to get a little creative with names sometimes. I mentioned the name game in a post titled A dog Called Vondra, and just this week a teenager left a comment to that post that made me smile:
Hi. I came across your blog in a google search when I read the name Vondra. I am a teenage Seeing-Eye Puppy Raiser about to get my sixth puppy to train, and I have not been lucky with names. I have risen
1. Veca
2. Tara
3. VONDRA (not the same one, however, as mine was rejected from the program and lives with me and my family)
4. Norm
5. Xinda (yeah…)
6. X….(all we know is that she is a female lab whose name starts with an X)
We are no happier about the names than anyone else and almost always groan when we find out the names of our new dogs. We often wonder how the dog-namers can do such a thing to an adorable little puppy.
Seeing Eye dogs are our dogs once we finish training with them and bring them home. And since they are ours, really, we could call them anything we want to. The Seeing Eye discourages us from changing our dogs names, though: one, the dogs are used to their name by the time we are matched with them, and two, the Seeing eye keeps explicit records of all the dogs they train, and keeping their original name makes that easier to do.
A classmate hated the name Hootie so much that he had the Seeing Eye paperwork changed to name the dog Rudy. A blind lawyer in one of my classes complained that no one would take her seriously if she entered the courtroom with a dog named Wags. She changed his name to Wagner.
Names are so subjective, aren’t they? I would have loved working with a dog named Wags, though I must agree with the teenage puppy raiser when it comes to Xinda (yeah…). but hey, what’s wrong with Norm?!
we have raised at least 15 puppies for SE and of course we get some groan inducing names but each grows on you and develops its own story: Darrell (at the time there was the comedy on TV where Darrell had two brothers with the same name), Cisco, where we learned that name meant anything from Cisco kid to an high tech firm (depending on your age, and now Jules where we constantly explain “like the author – not the gems”, and my favorite Zoro with one ‘r’ which when I googled turns out is a hip hop drummer – what ever that is. . sure SE made a spelling error but it was fun to learn about. . so with each puppy it is another adventure, OK I admit we are SEuppy raiser addicts
Happy to hear of your addiction — your work is so important to those of us who use Seeing Eye dogs, thank you.
I just returned from The Seeing Eye with my second dog, Rusti. (Note the spelling). My first dog was Hester (as in Prynne). I didn’t love either of these names when I first heard them, but they have both grown on me. A small correction, though. The names aren’t allowed to be reused while the dog is still in the program. That is, from puppy placement to actual guide dog training, two dogs can’t have the same name. But once the dog is no longer part of Seeing Eye’s program, the name can be reused. For example, now that Rusti is a dog in the field, she’s no longer considered part of Seeing Eye’s program, and the next R litter could theoretically have a Rusti in it. It would be cool if the name was out of commission until the dog’s retirement, though.
Are you sure? When it seemed my dog Harper would need to retire early, trainers told me to be *sure* to alert the Seeing Eye once he had retired so that they could put his name back into the pool. Hmmm….
Hey, Wags is the dog in the Wiggles TV show! I have a great fondness for the name because it reminds me of my daughter at age 2, wiggling along with her beloved Wiggles.
Great blog. Just be glad you didn’t get Payne – one of the SE pups we raised. “Huh? Pain?? Why would you name a dog that??!?” We must have been asked that 800 times! 🙂
Ugh. What a, ahem, Payne.
Beth, I had the same problem when I had my four daughters in five years. The bureau of census won’t take number one, number two etc. so I had to be creative.
Yes, but did they all have to start with the same letter of the alphabet….?!
The first dog my parents and I raised was named Biff- seriously Biff? But he turned out to be a great guide dog. He went to a guy named Bill who lived in Boston.
Names are so subjective, aren’t they? I actually really like the name Biff. Like Biff Henderson on the David Lettermen Show, right? Cool.
My guide is from Guide Dogs for The Blind and her name is Makiko. I absolutely love it! The names that these guides have are all so unique!
I’ll say!
Groaning with all the above! I’m currently raising my 10th puppy. Our first pup was a black lab named “Hod”. Well a hod is a bin to carry coal and I found the Cinderella like reference to be a bit offensive. However one day a young woman stopped me to ask about him and when I confessed his name replied “I think Hod is a god in mythology, look it up”. I did and Hod or Hodin is indeed the blind god of darkness and winter in Norse mythology. His name went from being really blah to being really cool!
Ah, yes! I had a similar experience with the name of my second Seeing Eye dog, Hanni (rhymes with “Bonnie”) when I found out the word means “happy” in Arabic. !
Jenny’s litter had five puppies in it, four of whom are currently working guides. They all have OK names (Jenny, Topher, Bruce)… but Beebles?
yes, sometimes the names seem weird and we puppy raisers don’t learn the name till they are in our arms. . but the name always seems to fit after a while…hmmm wonder what Beebles turned out to be like? Hope it wasn’t a GS – they try so hard to seem noble
Good point. Hard to imagine a German Shepherd named Beebles. a fluffy little Yellow Lab puppy, though? PERFECT!
_____
Nope. She is a black Lab. I don’t know her handler at all, but Jenny’s and my trainer said that Jenn and Beebles exhibited similar quirks. If this still holds true: very very friendly, inquisitive, stubborn, and smart!
Topher (rhymes with “Loafer”) is a bit more low-key and bored with routine.
Jenny’s doggie boyfriend, Hugo, is the chillest
Sorry, my long comment got cut off. I was saying that Jenny’s doggie boyfriend, Hugo, is so chill… dogs’ personalities are so different! I know GDB and TSE do the alphabetical-litter naming system, but not sure about any of the others…
I do know that Leader Dogs in Michigan allows puppy raisers to name the dogs themselves, but not sure of other schools besides GDB and SE. . I used to write pretty regularly for the University of Illinois Alumni Magazine and did a story once about a family who raised puppies for Leader Dogs and named each one after a basketball player at University of Illinois. Hmm.
_____
Beebles. You know, I kinda like it!
_____
I think it depends on the handler… can you picture a big husky guy calling his dog Beebles?
Are you kidding? I would fall head over heals for a big husky guy with a dog naned Beebles. But maybe that’s just me…!
_____
Leave a Response