With all the dogs at the humane society, plus all my rescue dogs ... and all my dogs, I've probably named close to a thousand dogs in my life, seriously.

My favorite thing to do with the shelter dog is either pick a letter ... January all animals names start with "A", for example ... or to name a litter of puppies names with a theme. Here are some I can think of offhand ... we had a litter of "soda pop" cocker mixes - Pepsi, Shasta, Dr. Pepper, Sprite, Mt. Dew, Cola. We had a litter of OES mixes called the X-File Dogs - Xena, Xerox, Xuxa, Xerces, etc. We have named litters after flowers - Pansy, Petunia, Daisy, Daffodil, Rose, etc.

After a while you start to run out of names. Right now we are on a "Cities in Wyoming" theme ... Cheyenne, Casper, Lander, Orin, Newcastle, Kaycee, Muddy Gap ... the next two I'm naming Ten Sleep and Meeteetsee.

Now, my own dogs ... most were already named when I got them. I kept their names, even though I hate most of them - Lucky (boring!), Pepper (boring!), Jack (more boring!), Georgie (ridiculous!), and Thunder (that one's ok I suppose, but it doesn't really fit her).

The ones I named:

Queenie - she is an old Australian cattle dog, formerly called the Queensland Heeler. Plus, I thought Queenie sounded like a name an old cowboy would name his old cow dog.

Lacie - it fits her. She's a frou-frou little dog. Plus, I liked a song that was popular when I got her by Lacie J. Dalton.

Keito - my sister and I were eating Taquitos at Jack in the Box when we were naming him, and just decided Taquito was a cool word, Quito was better ... and I just changed the spelling.

Wishbone - my son named him, for obvious reasons, he liked the Wishbone TV show, and our Wishbone is also a Jack Russell terrier.

Vanilla - her name was Priscilla when I got her, and I know a strange, irritating woman name Priscilla, so there was no way I was keeping that name. Vanilla or Chinchilla were the only things we could think of that sounded like Priscilla, and Chinchilla would be kind of goofy for a dog, especially a white dog.

Basil - It kind of followed the spice names ... Pepper, Vanilla, Basil ... plus he's quite the proper English gentleman ... just like Basil Rathbone.