Oh, The One That We Do Not Name

Because if you call her name, she will appear.

Life with two dogs is interesting. Lily came first, around the Thanksgiving Holiday in 2006. She was a fun loving, social, cute pup. It seemed to us that she was well adjusted in her development and disposition. However, at the age of five months old, we noticed that she was getting anxious around strangers who visited the house and that she seemed to be taking her “duty” of sitting in the front window and watching over the happenings on our version of Privet Drive a little too seriously.

Soooooo, we thought it would be a good idea to get another puppy to keep Lily company and interrupt her focus on the street.

Enter Sadie, The One That We Do Not Name.

It is safe to say that with the addition of Sadie to the household, Lily’s focus on the street has become more balanced. Now, she has a partner on her perch. They monitor the street together, only now the activity is a lot noisier.

The source - The One That We Do Not Name. She barks, grrs, jumps and slams around the house whenever attention is required to the street or virtually any other noise that her savant ears and nose picks up. She greets us at the stoop with a body slam to the door. (Yes to the Dog Whisperer fans, we are trying to stop that behavior - see our post here). She can hear keys clinking at the front door from the roof deck. Last night a fly buzzing by her head woke her out of a sound sleep. She hears and smells all things happening in the kitchen from anywhere on the property. Unlike Lily, who cannot be bothered to take time from her beauty rest to nibble on snacks unless they are really good, The One That We Do Not Name is there in seconds for her share.

Sadie’s real name was Buttercup. That is because Lily’s full name is Tiger Lily. The matchy-matchy cuteness of that decision wore off in about 3 hours. We quickly zoomed in on Sadie as a viable alternate, and now it is hard to imagine a better fit between name, personality, and aura. The only problem is that we have to be very careful about using her name in the house.

We invented a few aliases to use instead. Squirt, shrimp, buttercup, that thing (as in what are we gonna do with that thing), shush, silly and most recently - The One That We Do Not Name.

Here are the names she seems to really love: sadiepie and piesadie, ladisadie, sadielicious, zadie, szaaaahhhdiiieeeeee (really loud), and Oh That Sadie! We love these names too.

MM & RY 2008