Say My Name, Say My Name

Happy valentine’s day, everyone! I hope your day is filled with lots of love and hearts and flowers and chocolates. Mine has been (and will continue to be) filled with a little ball of white fluff.

See?

Meet my valentine’s (and early birthday) present. Isn’t she the cutest?

I love her already.

And even though she’s a teeny little fluffly white puppy dog, Doc’s pretty smitten with her too.

Our new little pup is a Maltipoo, a cross between a Maltese and a Poodle. Some people would say this is a “designer dog” but I say it’s just the best of both worlds. She’s considered “hypoallergenic” and “non-shedding” even though such things don’t actually existed. She was born on December 21 in Liberty, MS and has two sisters and two brothers. Her grandparents on both sides were a Maltese and a Poodle, but both of her parents were Maltipoos. That makes her a second generation Maltipoo.

Wanna know her name? Um…so do I.

See, that’s the problem. We can’t decide on her name. Her previous owner named her Popcorn (her sisters were Cupcake and Muffin, the boys were Peanut and Pecan) which I think is kinda cute but we can’t call her “Poppy” because that’s what all the grandkids call my dad. That could get confusing. She does look like a little piece of popcorn, though.

Wednesday was the day we decided to make her ours and we figured we had until Sunday – the day she would actually come home with us – to figure out a good name. Doc and I left Thursday for San Diego (more on that later) and spent the duration of our mini vacation throwing out names and testing them. We had to try out the whole “Come here, [insert dog name here]! Come on sweet [same dog name here]!” to see if the names were easy to call out and felt right.

The first rule of the name game was that all typical small-white-fluffy dog names were a NO. So we scratched Fluffy, Snoball, Precious, and Princess off the list.

One of our early thoughts was that we could move Popcorn to her middle name and make her first name something to go with it like Salty, Butter, or White Cheddar. I thought one of those would be pretty funny until I heard Doc practicing the call with “Here Butt-butt!” and decided that wasn’t going to work.

So we tried out a few TV character names:
–Seth Cohen from The OC is obviously not girly enough.
–Kitty McAlister is a cute name but she’s a dog, not a kitty, so that might be weird.
–Something about Nancy or Lupita (Weeds anyone?) just didn’t feel right.

We moved on to movies:
–Lieutenant Kaffee seemed like a lotta name for such a little dog.
–Red is my favorite character from Shawshank Redemption, but our dog is white, not red.
–Elle Woods was a fan of chihuahuas, not maltipoos.
–Dottie Hinson is a pretty cute name. Hmmm…a possible option.

Moving on to celebrities, I asked Doc who his favorite was. When he answered “Mariah” I quickly suggested we switch categories.

We have both read The Hunger Games series so we thought about Katniss, Primrose, or Peeta. Peeta was my favorite of those but would people think I was just saying “Peter” with a weird accent?

My parents dogs are named Henry and Taylor, so we thought maybe we should try out a regular “human” name. Helen, Courtney, and Linda were as far as we got before we decided that was just a bad idea. (Especially after Doc kept yelling out “Helen, NO!” to make it sound like he was cursing at a dog.)

We’ve considered names that match her appearance. Things like Cotton, Powder, Marshmallow, Pepper, etc. Doc and I were both a fan of naming her Q-Tip but calling her QT (pronounced “cutie”) but is that really the best name?

We’re trying to watch her personality to see if anything just comes to us, but almost 24 hours in, she’s still nameless. My parents actually made the drive to pick her up since we were on our flight back home. They picked her up in Oxford, MS and about ten minutes into the car ride, the sweet ball of fluff tee-teed all over my mom’s lap. Nice! My dad tried to claim the naming rights since he drove to get her, so he’s calling her Frannie. Back at their house, we played with her in the yard for a long time. She loves to run after us and kinda hops around in the grass like a bunny rabbit. The bigger dogs (she makes Henry look giant) scared her to death. Kids didn’t seem to bother her, though.

So, we need help with her name. Maybe more pictures will help you help us.

I asked Jett what he thought a good name would be and he suggested “Brianna.” So there’s that.

She likes to receive kisses. (She probably doesn’t enjoy being strangled, though.)

If you get low enough, she’ll give you kisses back.

Look at her little tongue!

Excuse the bad quality of this picture, but you can see that Bren thought she was the best thing in the world!

Bren has a fluffy white toy kitty at home that she calls LuLoosh. She, of course, thought that should be the puppy’s name. Either that or “Meow.” We actually have been trying out Lulu as her name but for some reason, it just doesn’t come out when we call for her.

After we traumatized her with all the kids and dogs, we finally took her home to our house. She spent lots of time exploring and probably picking up Minnie’s scent. We don’t have officialy dog bowls for her yet, but considering the holiday, I figured these would work for now.

After filling her belly, she was ready to play!

We tried to wear her out. It seemed to work since she konked out on top of Doc while he was reading.

This is when things went a little south. We put her kennel in our room so we could listen for her during the night. I knew she’d never slept in a kennel before but there’s a first time for everything, right? I picked her up in her sleepy state and placed her in the kennel and closed the door. I turned out the light and climbed into bed. This is when that sweet little puppy found her voice. And she used it to say “hell to the no.” She wimpered and whined and clawed at the door. I honestly don’t know how so much sound came from such a little body. We tried to go with the “tough love” method and let her work it out, but after over an hour, we couldn’t take it anymore. I moved her to our bathroom, picked up all the rugs and laid down an old towel for her. The kennel was in there too but this time with the door open. I turned on a small light before closing the door behind me. She still wimpered some but it wasn’t nearly as loud and it didn’t last that long. She finally fell asleep and stayed quiet until she heard Doc’s alarm go off shortly after five. Needless to say, today I am sleepy. Please pray that she gets in a good routine soon.

Today she’s in the same setup in our downstairs bathroom. I’m going home soon to check on her and I hope the bathroom’s not too much of a disaster. Fingers crossed. At some point today or tomorrow I have to take her to the vet to get her checked out, and she’s probably going to need a name for her paperwork.

Here are the names that are currently on the list to be considered:
–Popcorn (sticking with the original)
–Frannie (my dad’s choice)
–Lulu (after Bren’s toy kitty)
–Josie (my grandmother’s nickname – a choice I threw out)
–Macy (one Doc likes)
–Cotton, Powder, Q-Tip (the descriptive names)
–Pepper (because for some reason I keep going back to “P” names – we keep saying Peanut but that seems “boyish” to me)
–Polly, Petal, Pearl, Puff (all from a coworker)

But we’re also open to other suggestions! Please help us – what do you vote for?? Or what do you think she looks like? Who knows, you could get credit for naming our new dog.