Odd question - Call name experience - Page 2

Thank you Jenni.  That is exactly the story or experience I wanted to hear.  I had wondered what it might do emotionally.  As I mentioned in my initial post, it's not the end of the world, so if she is more comfortable and happier by using the name she knows, then I will stick with it.  I also need to see 1st hand on how well she knows her name.  I brought in a 10 month old a year ago, and he didn't know his name at all.  Saddened me like crazy.  

Thanks again for all your input!!  :)

I have had three dogs I adopted as adults and all had new names.  My first GSD was a female working line from a breeder, she was given to me at 3.5 years old.  Her name was "Chopper" and we called her "Kenya".  Chopper was fine with me but too many people got the wrong idea and thought she was aggressive (actually she was quite soft and nervy). Second was a dog we adopted from a rescue at age 1.5.  His name was "Teddy" and we just hated that name, so he became "Coke".  Lastly my pit mix who I adopted from a shelter euth list situation when she was 1 was named "Luna".  I actually love that name, but recently had a foster dog called Luna that some friends adopted and is also on our flyball team, so it's difficult to be training dogs the same age side by side with the same call name.  She was re-named "Indy" (she was a stray in Indianapolis).  I never had issues with new call names, just took a charged up clicker and a few sessions of click/treat with their new name.

I do not think Megy's case is typical. I think in time, it's fine to start a nickname or change a name, but I do think for a bonded dog shipped across the country or world, ie, the owner is not handing the dog off to you and there is zero basis for trust, it CAN be meaningful to a dog. I just wanted to throw it out there as a cautionary tale of "it does happen." I will say that Megy is a certain type dog- definitely a one-owner type temperament, aloof to strangers, not a girl who wears her heart on her sleeve. I don't think it's such a big deal to a dog who is more "open," like the "feed me hot dogs and you can call me anything you want" type. Megy's a tougher nut to crack. 

I once found a 3 year old yorkie on the street. He was really shy and stand offish. One day we went to the dog park ( we stay away from dog parks now) and found a flyer saying "Missing Yorkie". I called the number and asked the man what his dog's name was to see if the pup would respond. The man told me his dog's name was "Grand", so I hollered "Grand" and the pup came flyin through the house with a whole knew personality. Similar situation to Jenni. That's my input 😊.
Vonrivera

Have never deliberately changed a dog's name;  those I have lived with that came from my 

late mentor already had acceptable names the dogs and I were used to, so I saw no reason

to change.  With the dogs I used to work with, however, it was different.  Some were born (&

named) onsite;  some were bought in as pups and had either been named already, or were

being forwarded on elsewhere and a name or name-change was part of the deal, but as these

were still youngsters either way there were no difficulties.  But some dogs that we rescued,  

that had come in as adult unnamed strays, we gave names to ... ignorant of what had

gone before.   We found normally that provided we fed, groomed, played with, exercised and

trained them using our new name for them,  they settled in happily and reacted to the new

name more or less from the get-go.   In one case it was even faster and I think we'd hit on

something similar to his original name by accident;  in another case it was a little longer

(but only by a few days) where the rescue service had given her a name we changed because

we didn't like it ... so she had had three different names over a period of a couple of months.