Running from the Law: Naming our Pupcake

Tuesday, April 5, 2011

Naming our Pupcake

As long as I've know Ryan, he has wanted a dog named Sage.  His favorite brand of fly rod is Sage, he has no less than forty Sage fly-fishing hats and he's always loved that name.  So, when we decided to get a puppy, Sage was the #1 name on his list.  But I wasn't fully convinced that Sage was the right name - to me, Sage was a reddish dog, maybe a Brittney or a Spaniel, not a fluffy white ball of puppy.  I liked Daisy.  That just sounded so sweet and precious for our baby ball of fluff.  We had daisies at our wedding and they are one of my favorite flowers.  Ryan wasn't convinced.  So we came up with a list of possible puppy names.  We included as many hunting/fishing names as we could think of, we tried to think of names based on our favorite places/foods/movies/shows, etc.  We asked for name suggestions from friends, family members and the Twitter community at large.  We spent the entire 4 hour car ride to KC and the entire 4 hour car ride home discussing names.  I tell you what, picking a puppy name is HARD.  How do people ever name human babies? 

So, here's a list of the names we liked:
  • Sage (Ryan's #1 choice)
  • Daisy (my #1 choice)
  • Dolly (Dolly Varden is a type of trout)
  • Caddis (a type of bug/fly that Ryan fishes with)
  • Lilly (white flower)
  • Truca (Spanish for trout)
  • Cornelia (from Deadliest Catch)
  • Gilly (from the SNL skit)
  • Bianca or Blanche (since she's white)
  • Cheyenne (Wyoming)
  • Helena (Montana)
  • Lacha (Irish for “duck”)
  • Cabela (Bella for short)
  • Binelli (type of gun, nickname "Nelly") 
So many options!!  We couldn't decide.  By the time we got home, puppy still did not have a name.  We kept looking at her and trying out different names to see which one she'd respond to.  I was pushing hard for Daisy or Dolly, Ryan was thinking Sage or Caddis (Cady for short). 

"Hey Daisy!  Come here Daisy!"
Nothing. 
"Hey Caddis! Cady, Cady, Cady!"
No response.
"Dolly girl!  Hey Dolly Dolly!"

Bleh.

"Hey Sage!  Sage, come!"

Huh...somebody say something? 
What did you just call me?
And so it was decided.
Meet Sage.
Sage loves leaves.
And eating rocks.
But most of all, Sage loves sticks.
Delicious woody sticks.
I mean, really really loves sticks.
And she loves chasing her big sister around the yard.
The big sister doesn't love it so much, but tolerates it.

We're so happy with our little Miss Sage dog (aka "Cutest Pup Ever").

  
How did you all pick puppy names? 
Did anyone else have this hard of a time?

24 comments:

  1. I think Prince and Jackson are gonna go nuts when they meet her!

    ReplyDelete
  2. What a beautiful pup!! We gave our kitty two different names before finally just deciding to call her "kitty." We have many different nicknames for her (kitter pops being my favorite) but the other names we gave her before just didn't feel right. My husband jokes that we can't just name our future child "Baby" and it worries me because we can't agree on any names!

    ReplyDelete
  3. She's so freakin' cute, seriously. LOVE!

    ReplyDelete
  4. I love the name!! It totally suits her!! I don't know what it is about rocks, but ours love them too, soo much that when they are swimming at the lake, they dive down and pick up rocks... crazy dogs, our vet discourages it because he has seem them swallow them, but it is priceless!! M and I had a list of names and crossed off the ones that didn't suit her. We pretty much agreed on Lily and Gracie. Lily's back up name was Saddie and Gracie's was Molly. lol! Baby names will be tough in our house hold!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Ahhhh, she's so cute! Like seriously, so cute. And you are talented with that camera lady!

    ReplyDelete
  6. Sage is beautiful! Love the pics. Our Miss Harley loves sticks too, she chews on fallen branches now that she is old enough.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Oh my gosh - she is ADORABLE. And Sage is the perfect name.

    ReplyDelete
  8. She is definitely the cutest pup ever! I love every single one of those pictures!! My dogs are obsessed with sticks too, don't know why. I think Sage is a beautiful name for a pup, and it seems to suit her well ;)
    My favorite pet name we've ever had was for our dog Watson who died last year. It suited him so well!

    ReplyDelete
  9. These pictures have me itching for another furball!! Sage seems so sweet!

    We had the hardest time with our Finley's name - I wanted an "Old Man" name so I looked at popular baby names from the 20s and that led us in a good direction but none were personal enough for me. So it came down 2 - Nelson and Finley, both had ties to our college that we were graduating from and meant a lot to us. Meeting him we were certain he was a Finley!

    ReplyDelete
  10. i'm in love!!! sage is the cutest thing ever!!

    ReplyDelete
  11. Justin pretends he doesn't like Sage rods, but, whenever we go to Utah to visit my family, he fawns over my cousin's Sage rods, it's hilarious.

    Sidenote, my niece is named PAIGE, but, my stepmom can NEVER remember that, so, she always calls her Sage. Cracks me up.

    We went through about 500 names before coming up with Ella Mae for our girl. Lord help me when I have to name a human!

    ReplyDelete
  12. Your Baby Sage is so cute!! I love the name Sage, its original. Daisy- on the other hand- I bet I cant find 10 people that didnt have a pet names Daisy at some point in their life ( Yes I am guilty of it. Daisy was my rabbit in the 5th grade) So I think you guys did a fab job picking a name out!!
    I named my dog Gidget before I even had a dog. I knew I wanted my little white ball of fluff, I just wanted to find the perfect name before I had her! I was sitting at my desk one day- when I remembered the show Gidget- and that was it!

    ReplyDelete
  13. Okay, I'm completely in love with your dog. And LOVE the name!!

    ReplyDelete
  14. I love the name and she is SO cute!

    We named our pup Montego (Monte for short). We named him after Montego Bay in Jamaica which was one of our honeymoon destinations.

    ReplyDelete
  15. I probably shouldn't say this, since you've already decided on the name. But when I first saw a pic of her I instantly thought "Daisey" as well. But Sage is also a great fit especially since she picked it for herself ; )

    ReplyDelete
  16. So cute!! Picking names is so hard. Justin has already named our next lab Dolly! He always says, "well, when we have Sadie and Dolly, we'll need..." Hopefully he can wait a while! :)

    ReplyDelete
  17. So. Cute. We STILL haven't named our little one. It's terrible, I know. It's been DAAAYS, and we still can't decide. Hopefully it'll come to us soon!

    Your doggies are adorbs. Love!!!

    ReplyDelete
  18. Sage is such a cutie!! Look at her retrieving sticks already!

    My dogs have kinda hippie names. Meadow Breeze is cuz I was into the Sopranos at the time and it has a nice ring to it; Beckett Scout for the Red Sox pitcher (What? I'm from Boston. LOL) and because one of my favorite books is To Catch a Mockingbird.

    ReplyDelete
  19. awWwwwWwWww- both pups are SO sweet! make sure to take lots of pictures, that's the one thing i regret about when my dog was a pup. i wish i had more!!!

    as for choosing a name: i came up with the name Biscuit. my ex wasn't really sold on it, but he didn't really oppose it either. it didn't take much time for him to give in and the name ended up sticking (which was great for me). :)

    when we got pup #2, the naming thing went a little easier. several months before, we had been on vacation and had Biscuit at the dog park. another dog owner had a beautiful german sheperd puppy there named Cosmo who was so cute. we had liked that name ever since, so when we got the second pup, we named him Kosmo. :)

    ReplyDelete
  20. What a cute pup. I think Sage is a great name!!!

    ReplyDelete
  21. Sage is a great name! She is too. cute. And you have a sheltie! I had a sheltie growing up and I just die every time I see one now. Best dogs ever.

    ReplyDelete
  22. My goodness. She is precious. I liked your list of potential names.

    ReplyDelete
  23. We had a horrible time picking out names for all three of our dogs! We went through everything significant in our lives-tv shows, movies, songs, etc. Our first dog had two names (even had tags printed) before we finally found the perfect fit- Lucy. Our second dog had like 5 names- the first one was too close to Lucy, and frustrated her, we chose Gus, then went back and forth for a week or so, and finally settled on Gus- though now some other choices seem like they might have been better suited to his personality. Third guy wasn't quite as bad. I originally had one name picked out, tossed out a few more, and it came down to two. We chose Bug b/c hubby has a VW bug, and because he was small as a bug, cute as a bug, and scurried like a bug. We found that the two rescues (who had temp names) were harder to name than the puppy who didn't have a name.

    ReplyDelete