Our first Chocolate was a rescue, already named Ginger, so we named our new Kittens Pepper (black) and Sugar (Light Siamese) When we got our second Lab we started with Matilda, aka Tilly, but she became Tilly Jane after a famous trail on Mt Hood. Following the tradition Cooper named after the Cooper Spur route. I often think we should re-name them when they have grown up a bit and we see their real personality. Tilly could have Espresso both for her energy level, and the fact that she is the darkest Chocolate Lab I've ever seen. Her other nickname as a pup was "Chief Crazy Dog" (with apologies to the Oglala Lakota) Cooper started out very small, but given her size now, She might have become Chocolate Moose or Cooper Monster. We also sometimes call her Super Cooper as in the Turbo Charged Mini Cooper of the old days.
Well, the "official" basis for Pongo's name is that he's named after the dog in 101 Dalmatians. That is a nice, sensible reason to give to people who need nice sensible reasons. But the REAL reason is that, although Pongo is our first dog, we did have a step-dog many years ago. He came to stay with us every weekend (long story there). His real name was William, and that is what his owner believed he was called. However, we always called him "Mr Stinky" - for obvious reasons - and there is no doubt that he believed his true name was indeed Mr Stinky. He was our step-dog for many years and he was a big part of our lives - in fact his portrait still hangs in our bedroom. So when we were thinking about getting a dog, it had to have a name that was a link back in some way to Stinky. We went through quite a few (in english, welsh, gaelic....) and the one that stuck was Pongo. (Since then I've found out that 'pongo' is also the latin name for orangutang. Somehow quite appropriate for our 40kg monster here.) I've posted on another thread about how he ended up with his KC name. That's just too embarrassing to repeat here. Alcohol is a terrible thing.
