Skyespace

A Rose by Any Other Name Would Still Pee on the Carpet

I recently realized that my dog has about a thousand different monikers.

Not both dogs, just Tika. Ray is Ray. Sometimes he is “Ray Diggity Dog” or a shortened version such as “Diggity” or “Diggity Dog”. That’s it. One nickname, a couple different ways.

Tika on the other hand has a number of permutations. As for how we choose what name to call her in any situation, it really depends on her mood, how cute she is being, or how much trouble she is in when being summoned.

Since she is either constantly being cute or causing trouble, her names are many and in fact, are reaching the point to where perhaps her not knowing what her name is might be part of her trouble. But I digress and rather than seek obedience training have spent a good deal of time detailing the string and path of the many names for you:

Of course, Tika is the root and base of all the names. We hated it but that’s the name she came with and at first, it is what she answered to. Being a terrier, we quickly nicknamed her Tenacious T. or “TT” for short. This became a jumping off point for many other phonetically similar names. See the left branch of the tree below.

Also, being a female, Matt felt it appropriate to use with her one of his favorite pet names for me, “Toots” (rhymes with ‘foots” as in short for “Tootsie”). Toots/Tootsie then begot a string of feminine names in both short and long form. See the center branch of the tree.

Often when in trouble or for emphasis, we call her by her “full” name which is usually Tika Michelle. This has lead to a string of two-part names which is illustrated on the right side of the tree.