No, seriously. According to the American Foundation for the Blind, Helen was an avid dog lover. Someone brought up the joke the other day, and trying to one-up them, I quickly Googled for her dogs’ real names, but had no luck.
Anybody?
Well, the Akita referred to in your link appears to have been called Kamikaze-Go, though I must say that this seems somewhat unlikely (yet it’s apparently confirmed here).
Simply by dates, she must however also have had an earlier dog.
Ms. Keller evidently WAS a dog lover.
I found newspaper cites as follows:
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She had a favorite daschund named Tinka in 1965, the dog being a gift from her good friend Catharine Cornell.
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Two years before she received the dog from Japan in 1939, she had been touring Japan when her then guide dog(no name) died. But the story said she had five other dogs.
Do you think anyone ever told Helen Keller any Helen Keller jokes?
From what I’ve heard, she was the coolest woman ever, and probably would have laughed her hands off.
I know that in her younger days, Helen had a large mastiff named Lioness… but I don’t know if that’s what you’re looking for.