WEDNESDAY READER | July 20

Why aren’t dogs named Shannon anymore?

The bimbo yellow lab next door was named Shannon.  I know this because my entire childhood was spent listening to myriad voices screaming, “Shannon!  Get Back!  Shannon, come!  Shannon, heel!  Shannon, don’t eat that squirrel!  Shannon, dig a hole for that squirrel you just killed!”

I hated Shannon.  So did my pet, a Portuguese water dog named Teddy.  Shannon and Teddy had nothing in common.  Shannon was energetic, friendly and dumb as a dodo.  Teddy was smart and moody and demanded you earn his attention.  But they both had one thing in common: a normal dog name.

Shannon was one of two dogs named Shannon.  In the early ’90’s their name was basically the Jessica or Jennifer of every fourth-grade classroom.  And Te4ddy, short for Teddybear, was just as common among canines.  Two of my best friends had dogs named Teddy; another friend had a friend named Bear.

The other neighborhood pets included Max, Fluffy, Rascal, Ginger, Buddy, Maggie and Kitty.  And yes, Kitty was a kitty.  Oh, how, we mocked Cutie Pie when she came home from the pet store.  “Cutie Pie?”  we railed.

A dog ahead of its time, that’s what kind of dog.

Last night, while I was teaching my class on writing for children, one of my students said she wanted to name her main character after her own dog and asked if I saw a problem with that.  I said probably not and asked to hear the dog’s name.

Crisscross Applesauce Lemon Squash Peppermint Floss.

“What?” I asked.

She smiled and repeated slowly, “Cris. Cross. Apple. Sauce. Lem. Mon. Squash. Pep. Per. Mint. Floss.”

“Right.  But what do you call her?”

“Crisscross Applesauce Lemon Squash Peppermint Floss.”

Of course, no nicknames allowed in the land of weird dog names.  And good ol’ Flossy, as I like to call her, is only the latest tongue twister to come out of  a long line loquacious dog owners.

Lately, I have not met a single Shannon or Teddy or Fluffy.  In their place have been Moonstruck Cupcake, Thunder Boom Boom, and Twitch Kevin.  I recently met a Boston terrier named Greg and immediately said to the owner, “Wow!  A single syllable dog name!”  She looked at me, strait-faced, and said, “It’s short for Gregasaurus Coming This Way.”

Of course it is.

I blame “How I Met your Mother.” When the characters Lily and Marshall decided to give their son the middle name Wait-for-it, they made full sentence names a thing.  Sure, Marvin Wait-for-it Eriksen may be a cute fictional on-screen Cheese-Puffs-Are-Better-Than-Cheez-Doodles-or-Carolina-Springboard-Loves-Piano-More-Than-Earl, I’m going to need an inhaler to get through saying their names.  Also, poor Earl!  Who is this Earl?  And why does he deserve to be defamed this way?

At first I thought the obscure pet names were a Hollywood thing, but then I moved out of Hollywood.  So then I thought it was a living-in-the-wild-thing, but even my friend in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., has a four-legged loved one named Holly Bo-Bolly McMolly Is Not Tall-ee.

Uncommon names are cool.  I have an uncommon name.  My kids have uncommon names.  My rabbit, Pig has an uncommon name.  But is there really anything wrong with naming your Chihuahua Sally.  can’t the hipsters do us a solid and take back the names Fluff and Scruffy just to be ironic?  Isn’t that their thing, to trail blaze back into yesteryear when things made a tad more sense and pants were a tad too lose?  Where, oh where, is the micro-mustachioed wisdom of the hipster millennial to set us straight from our sentence-structure naming obsession?

I’m not asking much in life, just nicknames!  Texting an anecdote about you precious pup Holly Bo-Bolly McMolly Is Not Tall-ee would be a whole lot faster if you just typed “Holly.”  Nicknames, people!  Or — here’s this crazy idea — actually name your dog Holly.

“Katie!  Come over here right now!”  I heard my new next-door neighbor yell angrily.  I ran over to her and asked, “What’s wrong?”

“Oh,” she said a little embarrassed, “I meant my dog Katie.”

Crisscross Applesauce Lemon Squash Peppermint Floss is growing on me.

~ Katiedid Langrock archives, copyright 2018 Creators