WHATS IN A NAME?

April Fools Day, 2017 DeeAnn Ethan and I drove down to San Rafael California to the headquarters of Guide Dogs for the Blind to be presented with an 8 week old black male labrador puppy.  We live in Southern Oregon and our puppy raising club normally receives a new puppies from the “puppy truck” which makes a trip north to the Guide Dogs for the Blind (GDB) campus in Boring Oregon.  However we decided to go down to San Rafael which is about a 360 miles each way to pick up the puppy.  A few days before we arrived DeeAnn was notified that they were going to present the puppy to Ethan during the graduation ceremony that Saturday. This was really a special honor and they even allowed us to say a few words.  

Ethan started with a wonderful speech about his journey trying to convince us into getting a dog which eventually shifted into wanting to become a puppy raiser for GDB. DeeAnn also spoke very eloquently about the joys of being a parent and the blessing of this opportunity.  After sharing, we were presented with Ethan’s puppy for the first time.

The naming process for each puppy is fairly interesting.  It begins with each litter being assigned a letter from the alphabet much like hurricanes are named by NOAA.  The sire (dad) and the dam (mom) names do not factor into the process.  As puppy raisers we are not told the name but only given the letter of the alphabet.  The actual name selected as I am told is not managed by some highly trained professional with a title of Senior Identifier of Names or Director of Alphabet Assignment, but instead it is a collective effort and has even been used to raise funds as an auction item.  The lucky bidder gets the opportunity to name one of the puppies.

As you probably already figured by the title of this blog, his name is Dean.

The funny thing about Ethan’s puppy is that if you take out the extra “e” and “n” from DeeAnn’s name you get DEAN, his name.

On top of all this excitement, our club leader Lynn, drove down with her husband to share the moment with us. Lynn has been so encouraging to us throughout this process and gives us confidence that we are not alone but in fact part of an amazing support group.