Steve Knight

There is a new mouth to feed around the Knight household. It is a black Lab that turns 10 weeks old this weekend.

While I am currently taking care of the puppy, technically it belongs to my son, Thomas. When school starts in a month the plan is for Thomas to take the dog with him and start preparing it for winter waterfowl and pheasant seasons.

When not in class, Thomas spends his weekends working as a duck and goose guide with Crooked Wing Outfitters, a group uniquely operated by Texas Tech students. And of course he would rather have a dog run down the birds than have to chase them himself.

He wanted a Lab when we got Dixie, a German short-haired pointer. Ok, the two breeds are worlds apart, but the deal is going to work out perfectly. At 3, Dixie is maturing and shown the versatility to hunt everything from doves to pheasants. So I will hunt her early in the fall and later in the winter and he will probably use her in between.

When it comes to waterfowl hunting Dixie has retrieved a duck, but Panhandle winter water temperatures can be tough on a pointer. Her liver and white color also doesn’t blend in too well in a cornfield for goose hunting.

So when a friend had a litter of puppies he was anxious to get rid of, a drive to Boerne became a must. The dog is out of hunting stock, although her mother and father are used more to flush quail and pheasant than swim after a duck.

The good news is that puppy likes water, can already swim out to retrieve a dummy and isn’t afraid of the sound of a shotgun. She is still a long ways from the major leagues. Still she looks like a prospect.

Here is the rub, however. Thomas named the dog Zeta, as in the last letter in the Greek alphabet. He named it sight unseen and I really can’t explain why except that he wanted something different. That he got.

It started me thinking about all the dogs I have hunted with over the years and what they were named. And the truth is hunters aren’t very creative. Kate, Sally, Ginger and Sue have to be the all time favorites if not a little dull.

However, I read recently that only Michael and William remain as the popular names for children today compared to the 1950s. And like that trend has changed, so has naming dogs.

Zeta’s mother is Blanca, so called because she is a white Lab. Her father, Jet, is black. Not bad on either count.

I had another friend who named one of his dogs Seda, which is Spanish for silk. Another he called Rita after the frozen concoction. But then his ranch was called the TC Bar. He once explained that the T was for his son, Tyler, the C was for son Chase, and the bar, well that was for him.

I have also hunted with a couple dogs named Bo and a Sitka, named after the town in Alaska. It is a good thing her owner wasn’t a fan of Milwaukee.

I know one Lab owner who called his dog Tyrone, but he (the owner) isn’t quite right. Another has named his last four dogs Uno, Dos, Tres and Quatro because none lasted long enough for a better name.

We also had a couple of Lab puppies, one that died shortly after we got him and the other that didn’t make it a couple of years. We called the first one Bud. Since it died so young, we named the next one Bud also. The way it was going for a while it looked like we were going to have a six-pack of Buds buried in the yard.

We also once had a Lab we inherited that someone had named Dunhill. That was modified to Dummy for a couple of reasons.

Finding the right name to fit a dog is hard and very important. I remember when Texas Parks and Wildlife commissioners were about to ban hunting deer with dogs in Texas. One of the more impassioned speeches came from a deep East Texas hunter who told commissioners how he had named his dogs after his wife and kids. Another told how he loved them more than he loved his family.

In the end the bottom line for the dog, like any other Lab or pointer that hunts, won’t be what she is called because if she does her work in the field no one will care if she is Alpha or Zeta.

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Contact Outdoor Editor Steve Knight at 903-596-6277 or by e-mail at outdoor@tylerpaper.com

HAPPY HUNTER: Training a new puppy might be easier than picking out a name that fits. Zeta gets her chance to play with a bumper.
((Staff Photo By Steve Knight))