Puddles. Puddles! Puddles?

In case you haven't heard, earlier this year Mikayla agreed to train a service dog for the Summit Assistance Dogs non-profit group.

I proposed we name the service dog "Puddles".

Much like all my other ideas that have to do with dogs, no one else shared my opinion. She was named Ka'ala instead.

I'm pretty sure that might mean "Puddles" in Hawaiian. Don't tell the kids. They'll be pissed.



Ka'ala was a pretty large dog - particularly in comparison to our two pre-existing conditions dogs. One of the many differences between big dogs and little dogs is the size of the input/output. Yeah, you know what I mean.

One time we were planning on being gone for an extended portion of the day, so we asked a friend to come over during the day to let the dogs out for a few minutes. Happy to oblige, she agreed to help us out.

Then I received this text message.


Maybe "Puddles" wasn't quite the right name for Ka'ala.

Anyway, Ka'ala was a great dog who made great progress in her training program, but she had a tendency to bark more frequently than is expected for service dogs. So, she opted for slight career change and is moving on to become a 'scent' dog that will be used to locate drugs and other things that smell.

In her place, we received this little fluff ball. She looks similar to our other fluff balls.



Again, I nominated that we name her "Puddles". This time I had good reason.

Surprisingly, the rest of the family didn't want to apply my stereotypes to this young impressionable puppy. So they named her "Olivia". Purely coincidental... Olivia means "Tiny Puddle" in an ancient Dellorkcir dialect.

Olivia is training to be a service dog for people with hearing disabilities. We'll have to wait and see how it goes... Olivia hardly ever makes a sound, but she has a long way to go for training.

Shifting gears a bit now...

We've been driving a Toyota Camry for a number of years now.
No, it wasn't named "Puddles".
It was, in fact, named "Precious".



The previous owner (a friend and former co-worker of mine) named it "Precious", and all the maintenance records that were provided to us when we bought the car from her were all in a file folder titled "Precious".
So, the name stuck, but we didn't refer to it using that name very often. Usually it was just called 'the gold car', the 'cold seats car' (darn leather interior) or 'the old person's car'.

Anyway, we just sold that car last week. Glad & sad at the same time. The car had 212,000 miles on it... we were responsible for 156,000 of them - and they were all trouble - free miles. Exactly what you want in a car.

"Precious" has been replaced with a Subaru Outback.

Our new ride needs a nickname.

I'm thinking "Puddles".

Submit your nickname recommendations in the 'comments' at the bottom of this post. If I don't get some ideas that are better than "Puddles", then it just might stick... and I'm pretty sure nobody really wants that to happen.





~E