Most dogs in my Boston USA-area apartment complex have people names: Gracie, Willow, Brogan, Charlie, Stanley, Abbie, Frank, Anya, and my own Hector. There's more, but this post isn't a list of names I can't use for kids because they belong to dogs.
Frank's cohort is Zero, and there's also Lady the pitmix next door. And there's a beagle, Spot.
Hector is the first dog I've ever had as an adult; I wasn't bossing around Silver the mini schau when I was ten like I must the voracious, willful corgi now that I'm thirty.
I wouldn't have the genuine monologues I have at Hector almost every minute we're together (it's dialogue if you count facial expressions)--praise, discipline, concern, information--if "Hey, Hector, does that squirrel look suspicious to you?" was instead "Hey, Spot."
I speak to Hector like he's a person most of the time. A clumsy, goofy, sweet person who is mostly bark and stomach, but still a person, like a kid or a teenager who has yet to get it together. But if we'd named him Hoog (instead of using that as a nickname in my never-ending chains of Hector-Hec-Bug-Bugatti--Boog) I feel as though I'd think of him, and speak to him, differently. Like he'd be simpler, or that I'd have to be so to speak with him. I would talk to him differently. Instead of "Good job, Hector, let's keep going!" I feel as though "Good, Zero!" suits as well.
Maybe that's a limitation on my part, a self-consciousness associated with the idea of casually saying Snowbelle. Anything is a name if you use it regularly.
Do Alaskans have more words for snow than Floridians, or does it just come up more often? Does using "dog names" for dogs put a layer of separation between us, or is that just my perspective from within The-Next-Dog-is-Hypatia Island? Or hell, can I just not see that separation because of who I am, and who Hector is, and my relationship with a different dog would be different no matter the name?
Maybe "Hype, come!" will be as natural as "Hec, come here a sec'."
I kind of doubt it.
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