Whats in a name?
It turns out that with greyhounds there's plenty.
Take our two adopted hounds for instance. By day our 5 year old brindle girl's handle is Lottie and our black 4 year old boy goes by the name of Bomber.
The thing with retired racing greyhounds is that they often have several names. For a start there's their racing names. Then there's a kennel name and more often than not a demented pet name given to them by their loopy adopted owners (that's us).
This shouldn't be a big deal, but Lottie's racing name was Lotto Profit - Its not exactly a great pet name. Imagine trying to recall her by yelling "come here Lotto profit!"
Doesn't work does it?
Her Kennel name was Prof, an abbreviation of profit. It was still not a great name, so we renamed her Lottie as soon as we adopted her. It sounds close enough to her racing name that she didn't have to work hard to learn it. Her name was also one easier to learn as she was already dealing with learning to climbing stairs, and not running into sliding doors).
If it stopped there it'd be fine. Like most greyhound adopters we soon came up with a bunch of silly names as her goofy yet extremely loveable personality began to surface.
Lotties first silly name was Brindle Rocket. After all she zooms off like a rocketship when running with other hounds and she was of course Brindle. This was soon followed by the equally silly name of Insinkerator, named after her waste disposal-like tendencies. Other silly names have tended to be rhyming plays on Lottie such as blottie B. She loves them all and responds to all of them with equal enthusiam.
Bomber is a little more straightforward. His racing name was Lochinvar Elle. It turns out that Lochinvar is the small town in New South Wales, Australia where he came from).
Either way it's not exactly something you'd be yelling out at a dog park either.
Given he loves being super full-on like his dad (who's racing name was bombastic shiraz), his given kennel name was Bomber.
We didn't change it because it's suits him, he is a bomber - he'll dive into anything that looks fun.
Then there's his silly pet name. Being a boy dog he pees on everything when he's out for a walk.
His Tardis-like bladder (larger on the inside than the outside) makes for a far longer walks than you'd think, and a super silly pet name.
Based on his sprinkler like propensities I call him Tinklebert Woofledink. Yeah I know its just silly - Once again, not a name that we'd use at the dog park.
So there you have it, greyhounds and names, who'd have thought?
What crazy nicknames do you use for your pets? Do share.
