Hi Tess,

My name`s Valerie. My new MOM told me to get in touch with you. Like, I`m the new kid on the block, and apparently I might have a lot to learn from you about lots and lots of stuff. Let`s start with my name. My MOM told your MOM that when THEY came to meet me, THEY (former HUMAN PARENTS) were calling me Green Girl. Duh? Can you believe how unimaginative THEY were? Oh yes, Green Girl because the piece of string THEY had tied around my neck was of course (drum roll please…) green!  At least green goes with my silky Black Russian fur. Apparently choosing my name was really something else. Since polite Russian princesses don’t discuss cash, I’ll avoid those specifics of my “Adoption Contract,” but my MOM told your MOM that my contract consisted of a whole bunch of pages that talked about everything from hips to behavior and what and what not I could be named. My former MOM and DAD made sure that new MOM read and agreed to every single line of the contract.  Apparently, there was some heavy discussion about my new name. From what I could understand at the time (Like I was only three-months), former MOM and DAD seemed to think that any renaming should take the form of a word that new MOM couldn’t even pronounce. I heard MOM saying words like multi-syllables, odd diphthongs and 13-letter unhyphenated names under her breath, and her face was a little red! She was yammering that while I might be Russian, I was moving to Quebec where something called the Cyrillic alphabet is largely unused, and true Russian names are not common at all. It was AWESOME! Anyways, new MOM won and that is how I came to be called Valerie (which BTW, I like totally like)! I hope you`ll write back to me soon-I`m really anxious to start learning about and from you! How did you get your name? Do you think names are important?

Later (I hope),

Valerie

[Tess]:

Hi Valerie,

It was really great to hear from you. My MOM had warned that I might be hearing from you. I’m not really sure what I can help you with since I’m not really that much older- in dog years that is. I guess if we were humans (I’m still not convinced about this!) there’d be almost 20 years difference. I was born to a sire named Setextra Valery and a dam (Am I allowed to say that?) called Kalinka’s Western Beauty. At birth, I was given the name Kalinka`s Justine and a piece of brown ribbon to help distinguish me from my 10 brothers and sisters. Like you, my MOM and DAD weren’t too original. Today, I go by Tess as in Tess of the D’Urbervilles. Exactly how did I, a Russian-born, canine princess end up with a name of a character created by a famous British author named Thomas Hardy? Honestly, sometimes THEY really make me wonder about what is going in their heads. And THEY joke about what goes on in dogs` heads (We do think about more than food, right – but that for another time!). Apparently, THEY were out driving around exactly three weeks after my big brother Hobbes had left to go eternal fishing. THEY did a lot of that after Hobbes left because THEY were missing him something fierce. Anyways, at first THEY were determined not to admit another being of the furry persuasion to their inner circle. During that ride, DAD and MOM decided to throw around names just in case THEY some day decided to get another puppy. Bertha, Valerie (Kind of ironic, isn’t it?), Max and a whole lot of others were debated. It was finally decided that if THEY were ever to get another puppy it would have to be a she and she would be named after the main character from a book they had read in university. Story goes that as they approached the house, DAD told MOM that since now THEY had a name, it was time to get someone to go by that name. And that, my dear Valerie, is how I got my name. I wonder if any other pups have got stories about their names. Like with humans, (Here we go again!) our names are pretty important.

Take care,

Tess