Dave the dog

Pets need strong names too.

I'm adamant about this blog, and cannot be disuaded.

I would like to regress you back to when you were at school. You were floating around in your youth, climbing trees or playing kiss-chase, blissfully unaware of the realities of life. Every person who went through this stage in their life remembers the kid with the bad name.

I remember when I was at school there was a girl called Nancy. It's a disgraceful name for a girl under the age of 75, and this poor 8-year old (and incredibly unfortunate-looking) girl had to press through life with an awful name.

Let's now swap the playing fields of school for dogs in the park.

We all know that dogs like doing things we'll never understand. Sniffing eachothers' bums is a favourite past-time, and who are we to judge? Nonetheless, dogs themselves are perfectly able to judge one-another. You can take some control of this judging process however, and disuade your pet from being bullied.

Give it a strong name.

You can't go wrong with a stereotypical dog name like Rover, but why not try on a new one? Why not Geoff? It's a strong name. Imagine this: Steve the labrador.

Screams authority, doesn't it?

Allan the Bull-terrier.

Granted, nobody's going to be bullying Allan anyway, but they may have a pop at Geoff if his name was something more along the lines of "Tiddles" or "Sweetie-pie".

Don't let your pet suffer.

If you get a cat, call it Frank. Or Brian.

Let your pet live.