The Name Game

With human monikers, makes of gun or even gamebirds used to identify gundogs, David Tomlinson prefers the simplicity of the hunt system for naming foxhounds

- David Tomlinson

SOME years ago I spent an amusing day on a shoot at which one of the guns had a golden retriever called Ben. He wasn’t the best-trained dog I’ve ever met and had a tendency to ignore the whistle. This led to furious bellows of “Ben!” from his owner. What made this funny was that the shoot captain was also called Ben, as was the chief picker-up. Like the dog, both Ben and Ben tended to ignore shouts of “Ben!”

There are many pitfalls in naming a dog: giving them human names, as many of us do, is one of them. For the past 11 years I’ve owned a springer spaniel called Rowan and there have been a number of occasions when I have had to explain that she was named after the tree (also know as the mountain ash) and not after a former Archbishop of Canterbury. She was one of a home-bred litter of 10 and we named all the puppies after trees. Few retained these names when they went to their new homes, though one that did was Ash.

It does seem that if you own a slightly whacky breed of dog, such as a cockerpoo, you give it a name that also makes you smile. I recently met one called Doris – named, apparently, after an elderly aunt – and it suited the dog perfectly. Over the years I have met a surprising number of dogs called Dog, which strikes me as somewhat unimaginative, as does calling one Boy or Girl.