Ten years and three weeks ago I drove 40km down a rather rugged gravel road to a high country station on the side of Mt Hutt. I’d lost Spring in an accident a couple of months earlier, and I was going to look at a failed working sheepdog to see if she might be suitable for me to train in agility.
How It Began
The dog in question was built well for agility, but she seemed utterly unenthused by the treats I offered her, and wasn’t that interested in playing chasy games with me either. I couldn’t get any sort of engagement out of her and I was a bit reluctant to take her home. The farmer pissed that I was wasting his time, and because I suck at saying no the dog came home with me. I figured she seemed like a nice calm type so it wouldn’t be hard to find a pet home for her if she didn’t want to become an agility dog.
When I stopped in Twizel to let the dog out for a pee, she jumped up on me and semi-politely requested that I stroke her head.
The farmer told me that her name was Trix. I didn’t like that name – I had found all the consonants in “Spring” difficult to say in a hurry – so I decided to chop some of them off and call her “Riki” or “Rikki”. I can’t remember which spelling I originally used, but I do know I changed it every few weeks because it seemed like everybody wanted to spell it the wrong way. The dog in question reckoned she’d never heard of any “Trix” or “Riki” anyway, and responded exclusively to “Oi C’mere”.
I assumed most people had heard of Ricki Lake and would understand that Rik could be a girls’ name. I was very wrong. I also did not know how angry some people get when they misgender your dog (who really doesn’t care as long as she’s the centre of attention) because you gave her a stupid name.
