We Named Our Puppy

So many things have been going on in the past few weeks that I totally forget to announce our puppy’s name. We went on vacation to the Big Island of Hawaii, and I’ve been updating multiple websites for myself and others. Of course taking care of Johanna always takes up time. We’ve been dealing with Tina and making sure everything is puppy proof and so on. All of which is why I forgot to announce her name. So officially her name is “Alice of the Bearden Pack“.

We went with a rather unorthodox name for a dog. When I was a child I was fascinated with Alice in Wonderland the cartoon and book Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Many Disney movies catered to the princess theme. Being a boy I felt left out. Since my sister was older we generally watched what she wanted to watch. That meant the typical princess movies. Alice in Wonderland was the exception and was so much different. It’s a bit surreal. When the live movie with Johnny Depp came out in 2010 it renewed my interest. Tim Burton is one of my favorite directors. It was a concoction of all my favorites into one piece of art.

As an artist I love the surreal. This movie is my boyhood connection to the unexplained. When Johanna was born we decided to make a theme for her nursery. We wanted something out of the ordinary. Something that most people wouldn’t generally do. So we chose a Alice in Wonderland theme. Jolene and I made our own rotating mobile for the crib. We painted the room in a fun way. I painted a large Alice in Wonderland painting that we put on the wall. For her lamp we put teacups together. It was a fun project. Many people who saw our projects thought we would name our daughter Alice. We chose not too. Just because I like the book and movies, didn’t mean Jolene did. She went along with ideas for the nursery, but not necessarily for Johanna’s name.

So after a long decision, since we didn’t use the name for our child, we decided to use it for our fur baby. Since we may start breeding our dogs in the future we wanted to establish a name for ourselves. After researching for a long time the various Golden Retriever breed lines one thing became certain. The dogs who we fell in love with all had the same family lines. Lines like Thevenet, Dewmist, and Clear Passion come to mind. I hope that puppies we pass on might also carry our name on and people who look back on us as will see us as a betterment of the breed. Since we consider all puppies in our home to be part of our pack, we chose the surname “of the Bearden Pack”.

I know that’s a long winded explanation of her name. However, there was a lot of thought that went into it.