I'd been meaning to do it pretty much every day since we acquired the Very Fat Dog (or she acquired us). Finally, this week, I thought of it at the right time, about 8 p.m. Wednesday (which just happened to be exactly three months after we met the portly Golden Retriever they called "Princess").
24PetWatch is a pet-identification service. They help lost pets get back to their humans using a computer chip implanted under the skin. Maybe the pet can't talk, but the chip can.
I dialed the phone number on her collar tag and gave Brenda, the pleasant-voiced woman on the other end, the serial number of the ID chip.
"Ah, I have it right here," said a cheerful Brenda. "Cassady, right?"
"No," said I. "Her name is Princess."
"Well," replied Brenda, "that's not what our records show. She's a female about 5 and a half years old, a Golden Retriever?"
"Wow," I responded. "We were told her name was Princess. She's from Georgia. Do you show her as being from Georgia?"
"That's right," said Brenda.
She then offered a date of birth, the same date we were given by the Golden Retriever Emergency Assistance Team when we adopted her.
The two people (that would be my wife and me) looked at each other, flabbergasted. This was quite a turn of events, and I figured there was only one way to tell if this shocking information was true: Ask her.
The Very Fat Dog was stretched out at Jeanne's feet, completely relaxed as if all was right with the world, more asleep than awake.
"Cassady!" I said crisply.
The effect was immediate, as if she had heard a gunshot -- or a ghost. Her whole body went instantly to attention. Her head snapped around as if jerked by a rope. The look in her eyes was shock, awe and deja vu all at once.
She got up and walked over to me, tail wagging.
That pretty much told the tale. I had thought it strange that this dog did not react as strongly to her name as most dogs do. You know, freeze you in your tracks like when a cop hollers, "Stop!" or when your Mom yelled at you with that certain intonation that let you know you were in deep trouble. For most dogs, a clear exclamation of their name will do it. Not Princess. It wasn't that she didn't react, just that she didn't freeze.
So, we now have a dog named "Cassady."
I wish I had asked Brenda how it is spelled. That might give us a clue as to why a lumbering female Golden Retriever would carry such a nom de plume.
Could it be she was named for teen idol Shaun Cassidy? Heaven forbid.
Could she be named for the actor Jack Cassidy, father of Shaun and David who burned to death in his Hollywood apartment in 1976?
Might she be named for Jack Casady, the legendary drummer for the Jefferson Airplane, Hot Tuna and Jimi Hendrix (whose name is often misspelled as "Cassidy")?
Maybe she's named for Butch Cassidy, as in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. She does have some experience with stealing.
Perhaps she is named for Neal Cassady, traveling companion of Jack Kerouac in "On the Road." That would be cool, very Dharma Bum sort of cool.
That must be it.
I'm going to call 24PetWatch again to get the spelling, but, regardless, we will never truly know her namesake, just as we will never know who taught her to fetch newspapers, who let her get so fat, and how many homes (and names) she has had.
That's the thing about rescuing animals. There is a lot you will never know... But you will know the most important thing -- that you made a difference!
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