My friend Stephanie is a librarian in New Jersey, and she came to the Seeing Eye to visit while I was training with Whitney in December. Sometime after that she noticed a very calm, beautiful, healthy Golden Lab mix sitting in the back of the Well Read Bookstore in Hawthorne, NJ and thought the dog had a striking resemblance to the dogs she’d seen at the Seeing Eye.
Another shopper entered the store and asked the shop owner what the dog’s name was. Her reply: Vondra. “That’s when I knew for sure!” Stephanie laughed. “With a name like that, this had to be a dog from the Seeing Eye!”
Puppies born in each litter at the Seeing Eye are given names that start with the same letter of the alphabet. To avoid repeating names too often, the Seeing Eye finds itself getting a little creative at times. They must have already used Vicki, Veronica, Valerie and Venus by the time Vondra was born.
Vondra is nine years old now, and the bookstore owner’s family adopted her from the Seeing Eye when she was 18 months. Vondra had been deemed unfit to be matched with a blind person during puppy training because she was too much of a people person. From the Seeing Eye web site:
When a dog is removed from consideration as a guide, it is offered to the volunteer who raised it as a puppy. If the puppy raiser does not adopt the dog, it becomes available to other homes. If the dog has potential to work in law enforcement, those organizations are given priority in selecting dogs. If the dog does not go to one of these agencies, we place the dog with a family in the community.
The Seeing Eye asks a standard adoption fee of $500, but that is reduced if you are willing to take an older, retired dog. Whatever you do, if you adopt a dog from the Seeing Eye, don’t assume you’ll get a dog with a normal name — we Seeing Eye grads sometimes feel at the mercy of the staff member who names the pups!
Veterinary Pet Insurance Co (VPI). Has published its list of the most popular names for cats and dogs in 2011, and I’ve never met a Seeing Eye dog with any name on this list:
Top female dog names for 2011:
1. Bella
2. Lucy
3. Molly
4. Daisy
5. Maggie
6. Sophie
7. ChloeTop male dog names for 2011:
1. Max
2. Buddy
3. Charlie
4. Rocky
5. Bailey
6. Jake
7. Cooper
That's Hanni, on the morning of her 12th birthday (Mike was in Urbana visiting). Even at 12, her tail's a blur.
What?! The name Hanni didn’t make that list?! Hanni is my retired Seeing Eye dog — she was born in the “h” litter. Her name sounds like Bonnie, I used to tell people, but it starts with an ‘h’.
”What does it mean?” people would ask.
“Hmmm,” I take my time, act like I was thinking of an answer. “It means…it means they ran out of all the normal female names that start with ‘H’.”
In the end, of course, the dog’s name doesn’t really matter. And believe me, the name Hanni grew on me when she started guiding me safely through busy city intersections. It’s Hanni’s 12th birthdaytoday (happy birthday, dear Hanni!) and I can’t imagine her having any other
That's Hanni right after she moved in with Steven and Nancy in 2010. In a less dignified pose.
name — she’s a perfect Hanni.
For more information on adopting a dog from the Seeing Eye, email the adoption office at dogadoptions@seeingeye.org or call (973) 539-4425, ext. 1877.
Ugh, I thought we were a creative family, but we named our dog No. 1 on your list, Bella. Shoulda thought of Vondra!
Beth! Hi! It’s Stephanie : )
Love this post and love that Liberty (my Siberian Husky’s name) is not on the list either. I feel confident I could be a puppy namer at the Seeing Eye in my retirement – lol.
Happy birthday Hanni Girl!!!!
P.S. Hope it’s ok .. here’s a plug the bookstore Beth referenced in this post: Well Read in Hawthorne, NJ (http://www.thewellreadbookstore.com/). It’s a great local independent and we need more like ’em. So shop there to support local merchants and Seeing Eye supporters!
THANKS FOR THE LINK, Steph — I added it to the post now, too.
One of the parishoners at our church has a dog from the Seeing Eye named Tiffin. Your story today explains her unusual name.
Yup. “Tiffin” is a great example of the Seeing Eye’s creativity!
Hmm. I know a Molly and a Mollie (note spelling difference), both from The Seeing Eye. Also know of two Baileys and a Daisy. Interesting tidbit: since the first seeing Eye dog was named Buddy, that name has been retired. So if you ever encounter a guide dog named Buddy, you’ll know it’s not from The Seeing Eye. All that being said, my own Seeing Eye dog’s name is Hester. No one can seem to get this name right. She’s been called Esther, Hector, Pester, and Fletcher by one particularly forgetful professor. So now when people ask her name, I say “Hester. You know, like from The Scarlet Letter…?” Funnily enough, this only seems to confuse people more.
Aha! Hester could be Hanni’s sister…
Also wanted to mention that it’s interesting to me that you know of Seeing Eye dogs with such “normal” names, guess I’ve just been in oddball classes there. Some names I recall: Bouquet, Kimono, Exon, Yorba, and…Vogler!
I sometimes wonder what people were thinking when they name some of these dogs. I know its hard to come up with different names but they have to remember that we are out in public every day with these animals! I loved the bit about this in your book.
Reading your book, i couldn’t help wondering what Gus thinks of dogs and how he relates to them? I know you talked about Dora being in the back of the car beside him, so obviously he likes them but i was just curious about how he bonded with them.
Oh, I was tremendously excited to bring Pandora, my first Seeing Eye dog, home to meet Gus. I imagined a “Kodak moment” where they would meet and bond and be special friends. Alas, Gus tended to ignore Dora, and when after trying a bit to win his affection, she gave up. They rode in the car together and lived at home together with no problems, but there was really no special bond, except for when Gus dropped a bit of food and Dora came by to “clean it up,” then she bonded with him beautifully!.
Happy birthday Hanni! Wish you many more!
I raise pups for Leader dogs. I would have preferred to raise Seeing Eye pups but unfortunately I live too far away from New Jersey. One nice thing about raising Leader pups is that we raisers generally get to name them. I’m on my 5th pup now. So far I’ve raised a Dobie (male black lab) Solly (male black lab) Spinner (female black lab) Dana (female golden retriever) and now I’m raiseing Tatum (female German shepherd) How do you like those names Beth? I always wonder how the person receiving the dog will like the dog’s name.
Dobie got career changed. Solly was matched and is now working in Aurora IL. Spinner got picked for breeding and Dana is still in training and by all accounts doing very well. It’s very rewarding. Especially when they make it as guides. Its like seeing your kid graduate from medical school.
Love that name Spinner! And hey, I happen to have written a story for the University of Illinois Alumni Magazine once about a family who raised Leader Dogs, they named each dog after a star from the U of I basketball team that went to the NCAA finals — I recall a Luther, Dee, Archibald, maybe? If I dig up that story I’ll send it to you off-line for your reading enjoyment…
I love the name Spinner too. But mostly, I love Spinner. She was my most favorite pup. Its too bad that she got chosen for breeding instead of being a guide. I was so disappointed until Leader told me that they liked Spinner so much that they wanted a hundred more like her. Its really a huge compliment. I would love the story on the family that raises Leader pups and names them after NCAA players.
I am laughing so hard because I have a Maggie. She started out as Magnolia but, with that many syllables, it was quickly shortened. I know a Bailey, a Lucy, and a Sophie, and met a Daisy yesterday (ALL are on the list). I do have a Natchez. Do you feel the Southern theme? Hmm, most of my dog-loving friends are creative, over-educated types. Sad to know that we are so darn predictable! NOT me of course because I TRIED to buck predictability. My cousin Paul, who is Deaf, has a signal dog named Bree. She flunked out of guide dog school in California and was repurposed at Canine Companions for Independence. His first signal dog was named Lox. We joke that his dogs are all named for hors d’oeuvres. (Did smoke come out of your computer when JAWS tried to read “hors d’oeuvres”? Wondering….) I’m GLAD TSE and other breeding programs are creative with names. It makes the world more interesting. Happy birthday to Hanni. She looks truly happy. Thanks for another informative post.
Beth, good seeing you last night. Whren might you be available to have lunch with one of my work colleagues, Susan, to discuss a speaking opportunity in May.
Dean
Fun running into you, too, Dean, although glad it wasn’t literally — “running into” is probably not a term we blind folks should use lightly. Will email you off-line to give you some potential lunch dates, always happy to have a public speaking opportunity, thanks!
Happy Birthday to Hanni. Beautiful post Beth.
I just noticed your schedule for February. LUCKY you will be in New Orleans for Valentine’s Day. It’s SUCH a romantic city! My hubby and I love, love, love NOLA. (Yes, doubters, even folks married for 30 years STILL get romantic.) The food (Mmmm), Cajun accents, brick streets, secret gardens behind iron latticed courtyard gates, lazy boats on the mighty Mississippi, streetcars named “Desire”… Oh I hope your hubby is flying there with you. Enjoy!
Yes, Mike and Whitney are both coming with me this weekend, look for a future post about all the smells, tastes,sounds and feels of New Orleans, it really is a blind woman’s paradise.
I’m SO glad (and a little jealous) that you’re celebrating Valentine’s Day in NOLA with Mike! When you and Mike and Whitney are sitting in Jackson Square at Cafe Du Monde, sipping cafe au lait, and a carriage horse goes clip clopping past, think of your horse-loving, blog-stalker in Nashville…
One of my dog’s puppy raisers posted on the Guiding Eyes Facebook wall that “She hoped Barbie would get a match soon!” I saw it, and instantly thought “Ugh, who would name a dog Barbie? Surely mine will have a better name.” A couple months later “Kate, your dog is a female black lab named Barbie, B-A-R-B-I-E”. Just my luck! I ran through a list of similar names in my head, and chose Bambi. I think it fits, much more suitable than her previous name.
Beth,
I am in our little house in the Andes and have a tiny story about naming pets: as is common here, one day last year a stray dog, mostly pitbull, appeared at the door and after an unsucessful search for her owner, we adopted her. But what to name her (she refused to tell us her name)? Most of the houses here in the country have a name instead of an address and ours is named ‘La Brujita’ – the little witch. So we sent out a suggestion list of names for our new pet to family and friends and ended up with ‘Hexe’ – the German word for ‘witch’ and she seems to like that name. By the way, one of our neighbors insists that she saw Hexe get off the bus on the highway at the end of our property. Thet´s witchy, isn´t it?
(Beth, forgive the grammer mess, I am at a cyber cafe in the village, ther is no spellcheck and no dictionary – outch)
Missing your class,
Annelore
Hexe! That sounds like a Seeing Eye dog name for sure!
Hey Beth!
Vondra is actually a Slavic name meaning “the love of a woman”. Seeing Eye tends to get a lot of their stranger names from other languages, Hanni, is in fact, Hebrew, and it means “grace” or “favor”. (Google is a magical thing)
My class this time around had a nice bunch of sensible names like: (this is a complete list, there were 18 students in my class, one guy left without his dog)
The Golden Retrievers:
Alcott
Amber (siblings)
Everett
Eddy (they are not related)
Hoshi (means star in Japanese)
Indigo
The German Shepherds
Dutch
Felicia
Franco (siblings)
The Labradors
Gilmore
Gunner (siblings)
Hilton
Leon
Louis (siblings)
Macy
Specs (poor guy got named by a donor)
Shane (siblings)
Ruth (got dropped mid class and was replaced with the next name)
Windy
We made it home in one piece. Our instructor, Drew, drove us home personally on Wednesday and I think Felicia (yay, normal name!) is settling in better than I am. I know Felicia has at least 3 sisters with the names of: Feather (pretty enough), Freckles (ick!), and Flirt (double ick!) and at least one brother, Franco, who was in our class. Her parents were Rosina and Mambo. Feli seems to be adjusting to the change better than I am, she seems very happy, and I’ve discovered that shepherd tails are a lot heavier than lab tails when wagging, longer too. Kazzi is coming home tomorrow, so we’ll see how it goes.
I also wanted to add that I think one of Whitney’s sisters was in my class, I didn’t mention this in my last comment because Windy, a lab golden cross, was matched halfway through the class when this one lady’s dog was discovered to have a disease that would prevent her from guiding for long. She looked lighter than Whitney and I didn’t find out her birthday or anything but I believe it was late 2009.
I can’t explain why, but I get such a big kick out of hearing all the names –THANKS for sending this, Courtney, and continued good luck with Felicia. I Swear, you got the best name in the whole class!
Oh, and if you find the time, please leave a comment here and let blog readers know how it goes when Kazzi meets Felicia….!
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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 raised
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.
Oh, I so agree! Don’t you wonder why they don’t just skip the letter “X” altogether? And I’m curious: do you have any nicknames for “Vondra”? Kinda hard to think of one. Regardless of names, though, I want to THANK YOU on behalf of all of us who use Seeing Eye dogs –you puppy raisers are the best!
I feel your pain Heha! I wish Seeing Eye would let the raisers name the pups. The school I raise for does let us name them and they tell us to consider the end user when naming. Ideally it should be a no more than 2 syllable name. I think their system works better. That said, I know of a raiser who named her pup “Gasr” (Pronounced ‘Gasser’). Poor dog! And this name given to a noble shepherd!
Beth, do the students get to rename their dogs if they really don’t like the dog’s name?
At the Seeing Eye, the dogs are *our* dogs once we 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.
It is my understanding that the Seeing Eye never has two working dogs out there that have the same name. 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 – she is the only working Seeing eye dog with the name “Whitney.” They don’t have to ask, “Remind me, is this the Whitney in Chicago or Whitney in Sioux Falls?” and until she retires, they wont name another dog “Whitney.”
I’m told that sticking with the alphabet system helps them keep track of which litter each dog was in. Hope this all helps explain why, right now, there are working female Seeing Eye dogs out there with the unlikely names Wispy and Windy. Apparently Wendy, Winona, Wanda, Willow and Wren were already taken. I know that Whitney is!
[…] 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 […]
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