Thoroughbred Racehorses and Dogs; Show Animals; And Their Unusual Names

The Game Room
1

Animals whose parentage and lineage is important (thoroughbred racehorses and dogs; dogs and cats that are shown at dog & cat shows; etc.) have weird names, like Nan’s Pierce Arrow or Ussery’s Alley. Those names have something to do with their lineage and parentage based on arcane rules that aren’t important here.

My questions is, do these animals have like “barn names” or “home names” or whatever? Like, if AKC Working Dog Champion at the Westminster Dog Show is officially named Thurston’s Black Heron, is he likely called “Killer” or “Rusty” or whatever at home? When Cash Tiz Wonderful’s trainer needs his attention to he can groom him or feed him, does the trainer call him “Cash” or something?

2

I don’t have a cite but I seem to remember that show dogs are said to have “home names”. I’ve watched Westminster and I think the announcers talked about that once.

Not sure about thoroughbreds. But back in my tweener days, when a girl loves horses, I do remember that the famous Man o’ War was referred to as Big Red by the stablehands.

3

When my sister did equestrian events, the horses all had a “regular” name and a show name. Our horse was named Moe on a regular basis and then had some show name (that I don’t recall). The show name was only for the announcers; if my sister wanted to speak to the horse during an event, she’d still say “Moe”.

Since the show name was sort of a throw-away name, people would get goofy with them. A fairly common ‘joke’ was to show name your horse something like “Wish I Was” so the announcer would call “Next up, number seven, Wish I Was: owned and ridden by Jophiel…”

4

Among the many scrub horses I had when I was young I got an AQUA registered mare. When we went to look at her the ranch hand said, “Her name’s Sobriquet, but we call her Spooky.” Being that I was about 10 at the time, I didn’t get the actual joke he’d just made. On the other hand he may not have either. “Sobriquet” was not her whole name but it was part of it. We did call her Spooky.

The rest of my horses were just named what they were named. I did call them other things from time to time.

5

Each sport has different conventions, which, if you want to fit in, you must adhere to.

Thoroughbreds have a rather small number of allowed letters and spaces, one of the oldest registries (late 18th century), and the rule that no foal can have a registered name that duplicates another name in the registry. Since all horses have to be registered to race, thousands of foals are registered each year, so a main reason TB names seem kind of random is because they can’t be a duplicate.

There are really no naming conventions in that world, unlike in other horse registries, which are more like the dog registries in that certain ways of naming are “right” and all others just plain wrong.

Horses rarely know their names, as it is not necessary for handling them – you use lead ropes and reins, whips, heels, and shifts of weight to communicate with them, not words. “Stable” names are for convenience and they often change as the horse changes hands.

Show dog naming arose from a different tradition. Originally, dog shows were a Victorian fad of the upper classes, which had estates to raise them on, so they tended to be named (Dog Name) of (Name of Estate), a convention which came out of rural livestock fairs in which Crumpet of Greymead Abbey retires the West Snicket Champion Milch Cow trophy.

When dog showing became a middle class suburban hobby, its naming conventions went with it, hence a show dog will have the official name of its breeder’s kennel (although the ‘kennel’ is not a place, just a name invented by the breeder), plus its own “show name” as its whole registered name. They invariably also have a “call name” which just an ordinary dog name.

Champion Fantastic Four of LuvsAFuzzy Acres, aka Spud, probably lives in a suburban backyard along with ten other neighbor-annoying relatives. The majority of registered names are taken from popular culture, or very conventional romantic tropes like Windswept, Golden Sun, etc. Often they are cutesy puns, and often they refer to one or other of the parents. Maybe not all at the same time.

The Dog Fancy ladies (they are virtually all women) love being able to name a dog a long stupid name and have it printed on an official certificate.They spend a lot of time and thought on it, and it is a big part of the hobby.

It is a strange little world. But every hobby is strange from the outside.

There. Sorry you even asked?

6

I don’t know much about horse shows, but since except for one-breed shows put on by a registry, horses don’t have to be any particular breed much less registered, to enter most shows, show names can be anything the rider wants and can be changed on a whim, I guess.

7

Not quite. Duplicate names are allowed as long as the previously used names aren’t too famous. The Thoroughbred name limit is 18 characters.

From the Jockey Club website:

8

Due to allergy considerations, we got pure bred poodles as pets over the years. Though these dogs were never show dogs, they did have AKC official names which were 3 or 4 words long. Each of them responded to a single word as their regular name.

9

Approximately 450,000 names are unavailable either because they are in current use or protected because of historical significance.

Sounds like MMORPGs. Suppose I can name my horse xXxSephir0thxXx ?

10

As was the great Secretariat, not only for coloring, but for sheer horsiness…

11

I have retired racing greyhounds, so I can speak to the dogs. The racing names are long and often it seems like they were assigned deliberately to trip up the race announcer or make people laugh. The kennel staff develop shorter kennel names for the dogs. For example, my female’s race name was Get Ready Capi and her kennel name was Capri. I had a boy with the racing name JJ Mix it Up and his kennel name was Mixer.

Kennel people are practical.

12

To expand a little on Ulfrieda’s points, a registered dog’s formal name is called a “kennel name” and is limited to a set number of characters, including spaces and punctuation, by a national kennel club. The Canadian Kennel Club limits it to to 30. As it happens, I have some recent experience with this, as we’re buying a puppy and had to make these decisions.

The dog’s name - that is, what we will call it, and what it will know its name to be and answer to - does not have to be at all connected with its kennel name, the purpose of which is to ensure the animal is uniquely identified by the kennel club, and there’s usually also a condition of sale of the animal that the kennel name include the breeder name, name of the sire, both, or whatever. The name given in Canada is often a bit playful, since you have a little room to use. So if you buy a dog from Jackson Kennels and the sire was named Lightning, the dog’s CKC name could be Jackson Tampa Bay Lightning. I Googled it and the first exampler was a dog named Topper whose CKC name is Tollchester’s Top Secret. Get it? “Top!” Ha ha… er, anyway, the dog’s REAL name could be anything. You can give a dog an arrogant kennel name like Sydenham Kingmaster SuperDog, but its real name might be Taco, and after you file the papers you’d call the dog Taco for the rest of its life and never use the kennel name again. The dog’s real name is actually called the “Call name” by people who are way too into dogs.

Note that I’m really, really simplifying the rules; they are preposterous, actually. I think a dog can actually have two kennel names and there’s rules about re-registration and rules about words you can’t use and oh God, it goes on and on. We’re naming the dog “Benny” and will never call it anything else but “Benny” and funny variants of that, such as The Benz, Benzedrine, B-B-B-Benny and the Jets, etc.

The only thing a kennel will suggest about a dog’s real name is that it not be offensive or sounds like a common command. You’ll confuse the bejeezus out of your dog if his name is “Stay.”