The Name Game

Photo: Tony Stamolis

It’s been years since I’ve trained a dog and I long ago gave away my dog training books – my “Monks of New Skete” and the Barbara Woodhouse “No Bad Dogs.”  The truth is that I didn’t train my previous dogs out of a book – it was an organic, instinctive process that I’m sure was deeply flawed.  I’d like to do it right this time, and I wonder where to start.  My friend Tony says I’ll find reputable local dog trainers on Angie’s List, but at the moment I’m inclined to figure this out for myself.  Surely I can train a puppy.

Can’t I?

The search term “dog training” returns over two hundred million hits in a half second.  Thinking there must be a better way to narrow down the options, I log-in at the Consumer Reports website, but when I type “Dog” into the search field, the site returns a list of vacuum cleaners.  I decide to go broader and search the word “Pets”, but this only gives me another list of vacuums – plus lab comparison test data for stain and odor removers.

Then there’s the business of this dog’s name: Bubbles.   It’s one thing to have made an informed and conscious choice about a small — while still not embarrassingly feminine – dog.  It’s quite another to saddle it – and ourselves – with the name “Bubbles” – the name of Michael Jackson’s pet chimp; the nickname of opera soprano Beverly Sills; the name of a drunken clown.

Two, maybe three generations ago, in the Pleistocene era before vicious mean girls and the advent of corrosive social media, “Bubbles” was the high school moniker of the fat girl with “personality”, the one who, despite her size, still managed to be popular, starring in the school play as the matchmaker or the grandmother.  When I hear the name “Bubbles” I think of a cartoon hippo in a ballerina skirt or an addled, elderly aunt, or a demented character in a John Waters film.  We can’t have a dog named Bubbles.

The Monks of New Skete — an upstate New York religious order that breeds and trains prized German Shepherds — have an unwavering practice in the naming of their pups, the waiting list for which can be as long as two years.  In their book on dog training – the one I finally gave away last year because I thought I was through with dogs – I learned pups aren’t given human names because of our human tendency to then project human qualities onto the animal.  The monks believe their pups more readily recognize and respond to two-syllable names ending in an open vowel – Think Fala, Mookie, Pasha, Zulu.

But Bubbles?  “Bubba” is sort of close, and it conforms to the New Skete name formula, though for me it also conjures a beer-bellied redneck in a ripped t-shirt.  You’d expect a dog names “Bubba” to be a bloodhound or a basset, a bulldog or boxer – a Bernese, maybe, or a Belgian or Bulmastif.   A Chihuahua-mix named Bubba would wear its name with irony.

We know how a pet’s name – or a lover’s pet name – naturally migrates over time to something very far from the starting gate, how the repeated murmuring of that name over time –while rubbing bellies or scratching behind ears – burnishes the name’s edges, bending and stretching it until it contains multitudes.  Thus, Bubbles is simply the entry gate for Bubbly, Buble, Bubby, Boobie, Blubbers, Bubbler, Bubblito, Bubbilicious, Sir Bubbles, Seargent Major Bubbles, or even Lawrence – as in Welk, as in, Mr. Champagne bubbles himself.  The free association that led me to champagne bubbles offers some other possibilities – Corky, Frenchy, Fizzy — or even names inspired by bubble gum (Bazooka, Chiclet, Wrigley).

I mean, we’re not really married to this “Bubbles” thing, right?

I’m working in North Carolina and his morning’s email from Richard in New York clearly illustrates my tendency to expand and overthink these sorts of things, contrasted against his ability to nail an elegant bullseye on his first try:  “I think Mr. B. will be a good addition to our lives,” he writes.  “I can’t wait for our daily walks.”

Mr. B!  That’s it!  What a great name!

It’s how Shirley Booth as “Hazel” addressed her employer, Mr. Baxter (“Good morning, Mr. B.”)   Our Mr. B. would likely be shortened to “B” and or “BB” (as in gun) or “Bebe” (the Spanish word for baby — also the nickname of President Nixon’s confidante, Charles “Bebe” Rebozo).   Hmmm “Rebozo”… Bozo is a good name – and the name of another clown, which brings me full circle back to Bubbles.

Remember the Name Game?  Let’s do Bubbles!  Bubbles bubbles, ho-mubbles, bo-nanna-fanna fo fubbles, me mi mo mubbles (boom, boom) Bubbles!

I’m sure I’m over-thinking this name business, because as William (Willy, Billy) Shakespeare himself said of his Chihuahua-Terrier mix rescue mutt nearly four hundred years ago, “a rose by any other name would smell just as sweet.”  Still, before this week, I never imagined sharing my life with a dog small enough to carry in a zippered, airline-approved bag – let alone a dog I might have to introduce with a name as silly as “Bubbles”.

There’s just no logic to this; I haven’t even met this little creature pictured on the screen before me, with its scruffy tri-color coat and curling pink tongue, but I am over the moon with anticipation, certain already that Bubbles is exactly what – and who — has been missing from our lives.