i thought about changing my dog's name.
 

"HANK"

he came with the name. decent name. pretty conducive to various name modifications: Hanky Panky, HankPank, S-head, the Hankster! (he answers to all of them)

i tried for a week and that dog flat out ignores me. and he is a smart dog!! i can say "biscuit?" and he will run off and i will find him sitting next to the biscuit jar. i can be in the backyard with a friend, and say, "get the rope!" he will run in the dog door and come back with the tug-o-war rope grasped in his mouth.

second problem, i cant get my wife on the program. she forgets the new name!!

HANK it is. maybe i should name him Biscuit.

Try calling him Henry.

I told you some time back his name was Hank and he knows!

Try calling your wife by a new name instead :D

Crank?

I think it's bad luck to change a dog's name. I'd keep it as it is.

Yep...just like a boat.... but with exceptions. A buddy had a sailboat for about 10 years... he bought it already named "YORC" so being drunken sailors, on one sailing trip we came up with what it meant and it was dubbed the.... Ye Old Rotten Crotch (yeah... I know :D). When another buddy bought it.... his wife who had sailed with us many times, insisted he change the name....

So he did ;)

hahahhaha.

thanks for the wise counsel. i didnt know this.

My old as the earth neighbor in Alaska, who survived the '64 earthquake, gave me a dime when I gave him my ax in the late 80's.

He said never take an ax for free. Bad luck.

My dog is smarter than me. I know, low threshold.

About 12 years I returned from a business trip to Europe to find the wife had installed a new 1 year old dog. Tank was his name and I hated it. So I changed it to Hank, no problem. We call him Hanky Panky, Stank (when he needs a wash), Frank, Franky Pank, Frank Underfoot (when I fall over him), Frankenstein (when he’s bold). He he’ll come when called by any of his handles. Dogs are great.

Rescue dog we got about 5 years ago was named "Rocky" by the original owners. Those a-holes about killed him, so now he is Bohdi. Took all of 30 minutes for him to forget that name and those people.

I do believe the superstition, but I also believe that there are exceptions to the superstition that make the general rule true. One of them is renaming abused boats or animals to excise all traces of the abuser.

When I was a kid I used to read my parent's Reader's Digest. One issue had the story that taught me not to change a dog's name. If I recall correctly, the main character was a man who had lost his son in WWII and was trying to raise his grandson while not being sure he still had the will to live himself. One day he found a dog that had been lost. It was a magnificent bird dog, a pointer, but it was close to death from being lost so long, starving and matted with burs and needed to be nursed back to health. As the dog regained his strength, so did the new owner, and the grandson formed a special bond with the dog. The new owner knew that a dog like that belonged to someone who had to be looking for it, and even though he felt that no one could need the dog as much as him and his family, he needed to find the real owner.

In the meantime he tried to figure out the dog's name. The dog was well trained and would go on point, so he had to have a name, but he ever responded, no matter what the man and his grandson tried. Since it is bad luck to change a dog's name, the dog remained nameless.

Then one day the inevitable happened. Someone called and said they heard the man had a pointer that had been lost that met his description. The caller described the dog, knew his training, and even knew his habit of pointing in a particular way. With a heavy heart the man told the caller that the dog sounded like his and he should come out to identify the dog in person.

A few days later a small sports car drove up and out of it emerged an emaciated young man missing an arm. He had been wounded in WWII and almost died. He had been a bird hunter before the war and trained the dog, and the dog had helped give him the strength to recover. The dog had gotten loose in a car accident or something like that, and wouldn't know it's way back home so he needed a family to rescue him for the owner to get it back.

The old man listened to the story and realized that not only did all the pieces fit, but that this was a person who needed the dog more than him, and he needed to give it back. Haltingly he explained to the young man what the dog meant to his family and how grateful they were to have had him. The only problem, the old man said, was that they never knew the dog's name, and they didn't want to change it. The dog was far away in a field playing with the grandson and the old man and young man stopped to look at them before the young man took the dog. The young man said the dog did look like his, but he couldn't be sure after so much time, so he suggested that he stand on the edge of the field and call the dog's name. If he responded, it was his dog, if not, it wasn't and he would continue with his search.

The old man didn't think there was much need for such a test because it was obvious the dog belonged to the young man, but he agreed. The young man walked to the edge of the field, paused for a second, and yelled "Hey Chief!".

The dog didn't respond. The young man stood there for a second, looking at the boy and the dog. He turned to the old man and said that the dog sure looked like his, but didn't seem to be. He hoped that his dog was out there somewhere and he would have to continue his journey looking for it. He wished the old man well and said he hoped he figured out the dog's name. The old man was sorry for the young man, but he couldn't believe his good fortune. He thanked the young man and wished him good luck in the search for his own dog and its safe return.

A few days later a note appeared in the old man's mailbox. All it said was "Try Tennessee".

^^^^ What a cool story! Some people are almost as good as dawgs .... but not many :)

Hank is a good name. Our first Weimaraner was named Sophie. The kids were little and they called her Soapie.....and then I started calling her Soap....versus Soph. She was a great dog.

Our dogs get a lot of nick names, and they respond to all of them. Reuben is our male, and he is often called the Reubenator (using a deep voice) if he catches a mouse or some other prey. He does not just wag his tail, he wags his entire butt and tail, so wiggle butt boy is another one. He is a very happy dog, and if he is just laying on his side and I walk towards him his tail will lift up and thump on the floor so he gets called thumper a lot.

I call my cat d1ckhead.
he responds to that just as well as to any other name : he doesn't
maybe if i call him "sound of the fridge opening".. that's an idea

I have learned NOT to name dogs based on their character traits . Example: ball licker is definitely out :D but I will say yelling for a ball licker at the dog park WILL get reactions !!! ;)

"Crotch Sniffer" is even worse!

I hate when my dawg calls me that in public :D

the name i attempted was

"Appa" no-go. apparently Appa means "lick balls" in dog. or "tilt head and stare at me".

My family changed the name of our dog after we brought him home. Many years later I had to take him to the vet. I forgot his original name was on all the vet records. I told the receptionist his name was "Hershey." She told me that they did not have a Hershey on file. She said she had a "Peanut" on file. I paused a moment and said, "Oh yeah, that was his slave name!"

The receptionist was in tears laughing. I even heard the doctors in the back laughing!

Good times and a really good dog.

Back in my single days I had a Doberman adopt me, or at least my front porch. There was something she loved about that front porch. I came one one day and she was on my front porch. She was a smart dog, and loved to play. I ended up going to the store and buying some dog food for her and she loved my back yard. I expected someone to come claim her but after a week of asking the neighbors no one claimed her.

Of course I had no idea what her name was before. There was a Dentyne gum commercial that played constantly where the guy that just popped in some gum sees a pretty girl and says "Hello Betty" with a big grin. I named my dog Betty.

She seems to adapt to the new name with no issue.

When I mowed the yard and was stopping at the gate to push the mower into the front she would come running up and she would sit waiting for me to snap my fingers and say OK. She ran to the front porch, and knew to not get off the porch. I could fill the catcher bag, go empty it in the compost pile in the back yard and she sat waiting. When I shut down the mower when done with the front, she ran to the back yard know the front porch was off limits again.

She was a great dog that got a huge tumor on her leg that was cancerous. I had it removed and it grew back aggressively. It was one of the hardest things I ever did to have her put down.

Our current lab is names Jackie. She has one I and when I pointed that out to the rescue they got it.

Our first lab we found on the side of the road with a pup that had been hit by a car. We had no idea what her name was and no one claimed her at the pound so we named her Theresa since she was the mother dog.

Our beagle we should have named Son of Sheewana. He barks at the ground, the grass, the moon, the trees, the clouds, the house, the other dog, the birds the...

We had a stray that showed up on our doorstep in 1978. Just a mutt with a spaniel face. He graduated to the chaise lounge on the patio for home base and was happy with a can of Alpo & kibble every night. He was an outdoor dog, but on really cold nights he'd end up on a piece of carpet in the living room.

We brought the #1 son home from the hospital in 1980. I set the travel carrier down in the living room to introduce Brian to Murray (the dog). Murray saunters up and gave a big, sloppy lick to the baby's face. The wife is screaming, "get the antiseptic, the baby's been poisoned by that filthy dog." Murray looks up at everyone like, "what's up with the crazy lady...again?"

Murray could play baseball. He'd chase the tennis ball 50 feet across the yard & bring it back and drop it at your feet a few times. Then he would run to get the ball, stop, lift his leg, & pee on it. In dog, he was saying, "if you can't hang on to your damn ball, I'm done playing." And that was the always the end of that.

On trips to the beach in the Econoline, Murray always ended up "shotgun," head out the window, ears like supermans cape, much to the chagrin of the wife.

Murray raised the kids as his own to 3 & 4 years old. (They're 39 & 40 now.) Best dog I ever met.

appreciate the unexpected dog stories!!

great stories and great story telling!