Skating; What's In A Name?

Andy and I decided to name Skater and his littermates after Andrew Lloyd Weber productions. "Skater" was chosen to be Silstra's Starlight Express; I thought it was a beautiful name for a beautiful boy. We had never had much success at coming up with call names; our dogs all seemed to have chosen their own. Skater's great-grandma, who we called "Sirca", chose "Noodle", then "Moo". His great-aunt chose "Fish" and his great-uncle "Juice" had a son called "Grouch". Oddly enough, my sweet beautiful puppy chose "Skater". While the production of Starlight Express actually was done on roller skates, it was by sheer coincidence that this puppy gave us further reason to pay attention to HIS choice and call him "Skater".

He shared a kennel with Cajun, his sire, who was really quite the clean and tidy dog. Skater, on the other hand, chose always to leave a "pile" right in the middle of the kennel run. While Cajun took great care not to step in it, Skater never failed to run and "skate" right through it with all four of his big puppy feet. While it annoyed me at the time, I look back and realize that, for the first of many times, he had to go to great lengths to get me to recognize and understand what he was telling me. My Skater was always so much smarter and quicker than I was and I thank him for being so patient and working with me until I "got it".