I have three dogs. All three are rescues, and none of them had names that really fit, and since all of them had tough pasts, we didn't want to bring their names along to their future home with us.
We got our first, Dante, as a rescue. He was a bait dog in a fighting ring, and I managed to pick him up about half an hour before he would have been put down. He was aggressive towards men, but a sucker for the ladies; terrified of cars (it took me almost an hour just to get him in the car to come home), and was all skin, bones, and scars. Eight years later, he still has a little PTSD, and gets jittery when there are too many people around, doesn't like people play-fighting or loud, deep voices; but he is a world-class snuggle bunny, and the favorite of all of my house guests.
He's a red Australian cattle dog, and his original name was Fox, because he has a beautiful red tail with a white tip (a breed standard). We are both total nerds, and have a love for classical literature. So, because of his color, and because he went through an "inferno" before he landed in our arms, we named him Dante.
We got our second ACD a few months later. She is a beautiful blue heeler, so we came up with Gabrielle, a feminine variation of Gabriel. Again, we're nerds, and I loved the dichotomy of heaven and hell. Ironically, we're both atheists.
Our third boy is Titus. He's a dopey, but beautiful, ACD, like the others, but he has Gabrielle's coloration. B and I love the show Titus, and Christopher Titus is one of our favorite comedians, and his goofy nature kind of gave us the name Titus. My husband and I also met during a production of William Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, so having a name linked to Shakespeare totally clinched picking the name Titus. For fans of the show out there, we have a tendency to call him Dave when he does something particularly silly.
So, Dante, Gabrielle, and Titus. My babies.
