What's in a name?

"Why on earth have you called such a cute puppy Cheese????"

This is a question I'm expecting to come up against quite a lot once Cheese arrives in our lives. And then "puppy" will be replaced with "dog" and it will (hopefully!) go on for 15 years or so.....

So, why Cheese?

The truth is that it started as a joke. I was having a very silly, giggly telephone conversation with my silly, giggly friend Jules and we were still being silly and giggly when we got on to the topic of potential puppy and then potential puppy names. We decided that the name should be food related so started trying out all sorts of yellow food as names: "Custard?" "Butter??" "Cheese???"

After a big giggle, Jules decided that she preferred the name Cheddar.

However, by the time it took her to get those words out, my head and heart had locked together and screamed "And the puppy will be called Cheese". Uh oh.

And so then the silly giggliness explored all the fun opportunities that were to be had with a dog called Cheese:

1. To start with, Jules has a yellow lab girl called Pickle and when we met up for the first time this year, we had to get this photo....

Branston/Pickle

...so now, clearly, we need to get a Cheese and Pickle photo  ;o)

2. It feels quite nice to have a pup called Cheese following my darlings Flora and Branston Pickle. All we need is a bread related option and we have the perfect sandwich!

3. Photo opportunities as we travel around the country for camping/walks/visiting, etc to places that have their own cheese named after them are immense. The easiest one will be to visit nearby Cheddar and take a photo of Cheese underneath the "Welcome to Cheddar" sign.

4. Training tricks could be brilliant using cheese related commands:

• "Cheese Twist" ~ spin
• "Say Cheese" ~ grin/show teeth
• "Squeezy Cheese" ~ hug
• "Cheese Spread" ~ lay flat

5. It's actually quite difficult to say "Cheese" in a cross voice so encourages positive vocal commanding.

6. It is very easy to elongate "Cheese" into a recall ie. "Cheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeese".

If you can think of other positive reasons for calling my pupster Cheese, or have any other cheese related training suggestions, please feel free to share  :o)

Until real Cheese gets here, I have a pretend one who was a gift from my lovely friend Tina. He's not great at taking cheese related commands though  ;o)

Pretend Cheese