Almost 15 years ago, when we first thought we might get a dog we tried to decide what it’s name might be. In a glass jar, like some Xmas party game, we put slips of paper with our ideas written on them. Frida (Kahlo), Georgia (O’Keeffe), Ansel (Adams), Cole (Weston), Minor (White), all names of artists we admired. As it turned out, when we responded to an advert for a litter of Dalmatian pups we were told that there were two females and one male still available. We set off intent on collecting the male, instead we came back with both bitches. The boy was gone, and we simply couldn’t bring ourselves to separate the two remaining sisters. We settled on ‘Leica’ for one of them and, for a short time, her sister was to be ‘Snappy’. Leica always seemed to suit her name, like the camera she seemed refined and elegant. ‘Snappy’ didn’t last long, most people didn’t get the connection with the toy camera of the same name instead imagining it to have biting connotations, so ‘Flash’ then.
Two years ago when Flash died and we adopted our third dog, we were introduced to her as ‘KiKi’ and despite my initial reservations it did actually seem to suit her so KiKi she remains. Some people would suggest that you need to live with a dog for a while to get a sense of their character before settling on a name, but this boy came to us as ‘Pongo’, yes just like the character from the Disney films. He responds to it well, but I don’t. It has to change, and soon. Standing shouting ‘Pongo!’ as he races off to introduce himself to every dog we meet is just too absurd. As a few days pass and we begin to get to know him a number of ideas cross my mind, some not so flattering, as he crashes around the house leaving chaos in his wake. Originally from County Carlow, we toy with calling him ‘Carlo’, the sound being similar enough that he should be able to adapt. Maybe ‘Morse’, although that has little connection to his original name so it might be a stretch for him to understand, perhaps ‘Orson’ after the actor and film director Orson Welles although that too could be a difficult transition.So, here we are a little more than a week later. Everybody, this is Django.