On dogs and nicknames

There seems to be an interesting phenomenon regarding dogs and nicknames.  I’m not sure how many people do it, or how many nicknames, on average, people have for their dogs, but it’s definitely a Thing.  If you’ve been following along, you know I have two dogs, Dieter, the star of this blog, and Otto.  Both are labs, and so they both like to mouth everything, and lick everybody.

Early on, Otto started to accumulate a lot of nicknames, mostly around his propensity to lick.  Here is a sample:  Don Lickles (the first), Lick Skywalker, Licky Martin, and so on.  Of course, there were the inevitable Otto-<insert thing here> nicknames, like Otto-man, Otto-pop, Otto-matic and Otto-pilot.  I think all told, Otto is up to about 20 different nicknames that are in active use.  The most recent is Bessy.  He’s put on a little weight, and when he sits, his genital/underside of the hind area looks a little bit like a cow’s udder.  We’re mean, I know.  But we say it lovingly and pet and kiss him, so he doesn’t seem to mind.

Dieter has been slower to accumulate nicknames.  So far, he has Heavy D (because he’s so big; a nod to the big rapper, who is also a gentle giant, I understand), Nipsy Russell (because he likes to nip at you to get him to play with him) and the aforementioned Die-tard for when he gets puppy-level wound up.  The BF came up with a great nickname for Dieter last night.  This one’s going to stick:  Chuck Norris.

So here’s what happened.  Faster than I could catch him, Dieter hopped out of one of his beds, made a beeline for the sofa, and jumped right on up.  The vet tech told me not to let him jump up on things, but it happened so fast, there was nothing I could do!  I was a little freaked out, but obviously no harm was done.  I texted the BF about what happened, and he responded, “you might need to rename him Chuck Norris”, then, “Chuck Norris only has three legs because his fourth leg is kicking ass in hell!”

Pretty good, huh?

Here’s Chuck Norris (I hope that’s not trademarked or anything, or I’ll be in trouble) splayed out on his Big Barker.  I will echo so many others in endorsing this bed; it’s an awesome investment and cheaper than some other high end brands of “orthopedic” beds.  It also got here super-quick, from CA to AZ.