How Charlie Got his Name

I recently read a blog post written by a soon-to-be North Star family wondering what to name their daughter's canine companion and it reminded me of the days before our North Star dog arrived and how he came to be known as Charlie.

Believe it or not, in the many months before Charlie's arrival we worried that Tim wouldn't ever welcome a dog in our home.  In fact, shortly after we connected with Patty Dobbs Gross at North Star, Tim started to demonstrate an outright fear of dogs.  (Of course, it didn't help that out here in CA it seems that just about everyone has some variety of Pit Bull!  Apologies to all you Pit Bull fans but I must admit a healthy dose of my own fear.)   

We spent months trying to get him excited about dogs, reading books about them, role playing with a toy dog, and scouring the internet for pictures of golden retrievers.   For quite some time it really seemed like we might have made a terrible mistake.

Then sometime about 4 months before we learned of Charlie's birth, Tim took an interest in a series of children's books about two young British siblings.  Over the months we amassed an impressive library of these stories and often came back to one that tells the story of a friend of the family who owned a dog named ... wait for it ... Sizzles.    

We started to use that story as the launching pad for conversations about what it would be like for Tim to have a dog.   Then sometime in January of 2008 Patty called to inform us that our North Star dog would be coming to live with us that Spring and that we'd need to select a name so that the puppy raiser could begin name training the dog.

From that point we started prodding Tim for name ideas.  These conversations usually went something like this.

"Tim, what are you going to name your dog?"

"Tim."

"Well, that's your name.  Let's give your dog a different name, okay?"

Then there'd be a pause just long enough for us to wonder if he'd completely strayed off topic and was thinking about something else.  Finally he'd say something like,

"hmm, how 'bout Sizzles."

Here's where the bad mommy comes out.  I shuddered at the thought of burdening an animal with a moniker that evokes images of that old Ponderosa-esque restaurant chain (remember The Sizzler folks?) so in a moment of what would later be recognized as genius, I drew from the same well that produced the "Sizzles" suggestion:  his favorite book.

"Tim, why don't we name him after the little boy in the book?  What's his name?"

And alas, through my not so sly maneuvering, I put Tim in the position of being the one to select the name with nothing more than a slight nudge from me.  (Mommy dearest?)  Of course Tim agreed and it was settled.

The name of the book?  

Charlie & Lola.