I am now authorized to reveal a secret. Actually, that is not exactly true. In fact, I have been released from my Top Secret “agreement” and have been “approved” to divulge sensitive information. If you already know what I am going to tell you now, well, you are a “VSP”, that is, Very Special Person.
Not many humans get to the VSP rating, so if you do have that rating you are very, very lucky.
Here is what I can now tell you-
Dogs have secret names.
Yes, it is true, dogs have secret names. They do not always tell you what those names are. Those secret names rarely match the names that dogs are given by humans. You can call a dog Rover or Spike and the secret name will be something totally unrelated.
Some human societies have a thing that is analogous to a secret dog name. For instance, in certain Native American cultures each person has his or her own spirit animal. These spirit animals may function as advisors or guides to the humans to whom they are attached. In many cultures the spirit animal is considered public knowledge, in others it is a secret and rarely revealed.
Secret dog names are a lot like that. It is extremely unusual for a non-dogs (such as cats, humans, monkeys, weasels, birds, salmon, etc.) to know a secret dog name. Only the dog who owns the secret dog name can tell you what that name is. I was told that the secret dog name “represented” the dog. I have since learned that is not exactly true.
The secret dog name doesn’t really represent the dog in question. It is deeper than that. You might say that the secret dog name contains the essence of the dog. But, again, that isn’t quite right, either. It appears that the secret dog name cannot be described in human terms in a manner that people understand. The best thing to do is to accept what a certain dog told me, “The secret dog name just IS.”
That is good enough for me.
By now you are probably wondering how it is that I know all this. My dog-pal, Annaleigh, gave me the entire story. I was sworn to secrecy until a certain thing happened. Now that the certain thing has happened, I can tell you about the secret dog name. Unfortunately, I can’t mention the certain thing that happened that allows me to now tell the story! It is all sooooooooooo complicated.
Dog’s don’t think it is complicated. Dogs are funny that way. They think that humans are complicated but that dogs are not. Cats, they say, pretend to be complicated, but they are merely goofy. Don’t get mad at me, that is what dogs say!
After I found out about secret dog names, I wondered what the secret names were of the other dogs I have known. I asked our dog-pal, Maggie, about this. I got no answer. I got nothing at all. Not a blink, not a smile, not a nose twitch. Maggie was totally stone-faced and refused to even acknowledge the question, let along the answer. Some dogs are like that. Either they speak up, or they don’t. That’s the way it is.
I considered Shorty, who you have been reading about in these Dog Tales. I think that sometimes Shorty may have wanted to tell me what her secret dog name was, but for some reason she did not. I suspect, but I cannot be sure, that Shorty wanted me to guess what her secret dog name was. I have a pretty good guess, but I cannot tell you what it was because it would be a violation of the IDNSA (Intergalactic Dog Name Secrecy Agreement), and the penalties for violating the IDNSA would be too horrible to consider.
Let me just say that the scariest episode of Dr. Who has nothing that even comes close to violating the IDNSA. The movie Alien is a mere piffle compared to a violation of the IDNSA. Do you want to know the worst thing about the IDNSA? I hesitate to even bring it up! It turns out that the IDNSA is so classified that most people do not even know about it, even though we have all agreed to it.
HA! Put that in your baclava and roast it over an open fire.
I researched this IDNSA situation and after many months of investigation discovered that some idiot caveman (probably one of those Neanderthal dudes) was sitting around his campfire when an ancestral proto-dog (I think it was a smart wolf, but I don’t really know for sure) wandered into the camp and asked the caveman to “click” an agreement, which the Neanderthal did without even reading it. It was one of the first “click if you agree” incidents.
You are no doubt wondering how a Neanderthal would click something. Well, seriously, I can only say “duh”, or maybe “D’oh!”. Picture this: The proto-dog wanders in with the agreement carved on a stone and points to the bottom line says, “Click here”. The Neanderthal picks up a little rock and taps the stone, thereby creating a click, and the job is done. Rather obvious, don’t you think?
Ever since that moment all humans have been bound by the INDSA.
And that, my young friends, is why you should always read those “click if you agree” statements!
Now you know why I cannot tell you what my best guess is for Shorty’s secret dog name.
Morris, who you have also been reading about in the Dog Tales, never let on one way or the other about his secret dog name. He was just super-cool, and it was not a subject he would even bother about. Morris was sort of like the Jeff Goldblum of the dog world.
What was Annaleigh’s secret name?
Annaleigh’s secret name was Pepper.
I am not sure why it was Pepper, but Annaleigh assured me that her secret name was, indeed, Pepper. I have thought about it for a long time, and I believe that I can see how Pepper fits Annaleigh. Now you know what I know.
That is the story of dogs’ secret names.