Ayla’s AKC Name

Wayyy back before Ayla was ever even born, my breeder asked me what I wanted to name her. I knew her name was going to be Ayla, because it was one of two names I’d been saving for my future dogs.

Ayla is the main character in a book series by Jean M Auel about prehistoric people. The first book is titled Clan of the Cave Bears, but I really fell in love with the character in the second book Valley of Horses.

My breeder asked what I wanted Ayla’s formal AKC name to be when she was registered and told me could be just Ayla, or something funny or clever. I just had to have the kennel name in the AKC registered name. By then I had figured out that Ayla translated to “Moonlight” in Turkish, so I was bouncing around ideas with a friend related to that:

Kiss of Moonlight

Drop of Moonlight

Dances in Moonlight

I asked a colleague who had been asking me on a weekly basis when I was getting my dog, what he thought her AKC name should be? He wrote back saying he’d looked it up and didn’t understand what the purpose of this name was, which I thought funny and an appropriate response to someone unfamiliar with the AKC registration paperwork.

I decided to go with Drop of Moonlight. However, as it happened Ayla’s breeder didn’t submit the final paperwork until approximately a month into my ownership of her and so right before that went through she asked again, what did I want Ayla’s AKC name to be?

Well. Drop of Moonlight was entirely too delicate for the little hellion I now owned. I decided to rethink my strategy. I understand that it’s a name that will pretty much exist only on paperwork, but naming things is serious business! After some serious thought, I choose Budon’s Little Banshee Ayla. I gave her this name, because for the entire first month of her life with me, I often referred to her “my little banshee” given that every time I put her in her crate she wailed as if she was fighting off demons.

The funny thing about the crate yowling is that shortly after Ayla came home with me, we went to the vet for her first appointment and I brought with me the microchip I had been given, and asked the vet to insert it. They asked if maybe I didn’t want to wait until I spayed her? It was a big needle and at least then she’d be under anesthesia. I thought about it, but asked them to do it anyway. I had an 8 week old puppy who was going to get walked by strangers twice a day and couldn’t be spayed until 6 months. Lord forbid she get loose, I’d rather she be microchipped. So they did it. Ayla yelped. But here’s the thing, getting jabbed with a big-ass needle probably rated a 4/10 in her bark scale, whereas she’d have you believe that being in a crate was a 10/10. Ironically, that helped me put her attitude in perspective. Sure, it broke my heart every night when I went upstairs hearing her unhappy cries, but she did grow out of it, and I now knew that much of it was theatrics.