The rest of a story

If you’ve read Mary McCarthy’s memoir, Memories of a Catholic Girlhood, you might remember the point/counter-point structure. First she told a story from her young life, and then, in a following passage, she reported what others, especially her brother, remembered about the same episode. Their recollections ranged from complete agreement, to something completely different, to not remembering it at all, and all the degrees in between.

She told the story, and then she told the rest of it.

McCarthy’s book is what struck me when Mom gave me the one picture she had of King, my first dog.

My sister and my dog, King

I look at this picture, and I don’t see the dog of regal bearing and pointy ears that I wrote about naming on June 1st. What I see is an adolescent dog, perhaps still a puppy.

When Mom gave me the photo the other day, she said that Dad had found King running loose at the gas station my Dad owned, and brought him home. We didn’t keep King long — he kept jumping up on us kids.

Of course King jumped up. He was an untrained puppy. Neither Mom nor Dad knew much about dog training, nor did they have the time. Dad worked long hours at the station. Mom was a stay-at-home mother with three little kids to take care of.

But I do know the name, King, is right — that’s what written on the back of the photo. And I know I must have had some reason for naming him that. Perhaps his ears and chest lifted up at the moment I named him.

And I’m sure I loved King. The rest of what I wrote may just be the story I’ve always told myself.

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Naming a dog

Getting a puppy almost always means choosing a name. Naming isn’t always that easy. And Cooper is our first purebred, registered dog, which means we had to come up with one of those multi-part names that most of the time bear no relation to what you actually call the dog.

I’ve had some success with naming dogs, after a bit of a rocky start. My very first dog was a German Shepherd. We got him when I was young, probably about 5 or 6. I loved that dog, and I named him Dog.

Until one day, my mother leaned out her back bedroom window and said with some exasperation, “You can’t call that dog Dog.” I didn’t know why not, but agreed to give another name some thought.

I studied Dog carefully. His most prominent features were his regal bearing and very upright, pointy ears. Looked like a crown to me, so I renamed him King.

(King didn’t stay with us for long. I was told that he was sent to live on a farm. There were a couple of other childhood dogs, too, that I didn’t have a hand in naming.)

The next dog was our Malamute mix, Russ’s and my wedding present to each other. We wanted a two syllable name that started with a hard consonent sound. Also we loved boats. I don’t remember how “Kayak” occurred to us, but that’s the name that stuck.

After that, we had Chaco and Cleo (whom everyone wanted, for some reason, to call “Chloe”).

And then, Cooper. Or rather, Realta Rosario Cooper. “Realta” stands for the kennel he came from. And since his litter were Valentine’s Day puppies, Rosemary wanted something romantic or Valentine-y. So we added “Rosario”: That was the name of the resort where Russ and I first discovered each other romantically, and it sounded like it had “roses” in it — a very romantic flower.

And then Cooper. Well, here, on the one hand, I’m weird. I wanted the “call” name to be part of the registered name — this is not usual. And I wanted to keep in the two-syllable, hard “K” sound tradition. We tried on a bunch of Irish male names, but none of them caught our attention. So, as I was reading out loud a list of names that start with a C or a K, Cooper just sounded good.

But alas, on the other hand, I am not at all unusual when it comes to “Cooper.” It turns out that there are hundreds of dogs around here with that name. I discovered this one day, when a strange, off-leash dog was rushing up to Cooper. I asked the owner to control her dog, and she said, “Cooper! No! Stop that!” Well, of course, both Coopers turned to look at her, mine very confused.

And another time, at the dog park, I was calling my dog away from a disagreement, when one of the other owners asked me what my dog’s name was. When I told her, she replied, “It figures.” Turned out there was another adolescent Cooper who went to that park who liked to cause trouble.

And then there’s the old Lab, Cooper, around the corner, another Cooper in obedience class, and a variety of blogs about other Coopers…

Next dog, I’m following Susan’s advice. Before I name my next dog, she said, I should call a bunch of doggy day cares and ask what the most popular names are. And then, don’t use any of those names. Turns out, if I’d done that this time, I definitely would not have chosen “Cooper.”

I bet “Dog” would have been available, though.

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