What's in a Name?

In my camping post I told you about having a couple of close calls with the dogs on our camping trip and how this totally freaks Andrew and I out. Friday night we had Liberty and Liam on their tie outs. Well Liberty's got clipped on wrong. It was put on her nametag instead of her collar. A large dog walked by and she went nuts. She started barking and took off after the dog which broke her nametag and set her loose. This scares Andrew and I to death. If you haven't figured out by now, Liberty and Liam are like our two kids. I can't imagine not having them with us. I dread the day Liberty passes away. I will tell you right now I will not be going to work that day. There will definitely be some tears. She is my girl!

Okay so the reason her getting loose bothers us so much? She is named Liberty for a reason. We found her on petfinder.com. She was in Memphis. I had been begging Andrew for a dog pretty much since the moment we said I do. The time just wasn't right for us. For the first few years of our marriage we lived in an apartment and I went to school all day and worked all night. We knew this wasn't right for a dog. The day we bought our house I started asking again. I visited petfinder on a daily basis. We just couldn't find a dog that we both liked. One day I stumbled across this sweet tiny dog named Dopey. She was one of seven. Her dad, Walt, and her pregnant mom, Disney, had been dropped on the side of the road. After the pound picked them up, Disney had seven puppies, Doc, Sneezy, Sleepy, Dopey, Happy, Bashful, and Grumpy. Andrew and I fell in love with Dopey. She was so cute, but she was in Memphis. Andrew wasn't sure he wanted to drive two hours for a dog.

A few days later our nephew Tyler called and wanted Andrew to take him to a Hawk Nelson concert in where else but Memphis. See we were meant to have Dopey. So Andrew and Tyler left on a Sunday afternoon to the concert and to pick up Dopey. When Andrew got there the foster parents who had been keeping Dopey and one of her brothers, said they Dopey wasn't dopey at all. Because of this, they started calling her Nina which is spanish for girl. So Drew and Tyler brought Nina home.

They got home around 11:30 that night. I loved on Nina for a while. I got ready to take her outside before we went to bed. I asked Andrew if I should put her on her leash. He said she will be fine. So off we went with no leash into our fenceless backyard. We were out there several minutes when she finally took care of business. I was getting ready to bring her back in when she heard something that spooked her. Off she went into the woods behind our house. Nina is a very fast little girl. I ran in to get Andrew and Tyler and we took off looking for her. So there we were looking for a tiny brown dog in the woods in the middle of the night. We called and called and looked and looked. Eventually I came in the house, locked myself in the bathroom and began crying my eyes out. I felt so bad. After a few minutes Andrew came and tried to talk me out of the bathroom. I just remember crying and telling him to take Tyler home. For whatever reason, I didn't want Tyler to see me so upset over a dog. After several minutes I convinced Andrew to take Tyler home. When he left I crawled into bed. I pretended to be asleep when he got home. I heard him go outside. I got up and walked outside to find my husband, a grown man, sitting on the backporch crying like a baby. I just sat and cried with him. It was very late at this point. We finally came in and went to sleep.

The next morning Andrew got up and looked for her again, still couldn't find her. I went to work, but was only there a couple of hours. I just felt sick because I was so upset. I talked them into letting me come home. I sat outside with wet dog food calling her name. I thought I heard something but when I went to where the sound was coming from, she would quit crying.

Around 4:30 that afternoon, our friend Stuart came over with his dog, Daisy. Daisy barks on command and he thought maybe she could get Nina to bark. Our neighbor had his dog out looking too. Andrew was home and looking. Nina's foster mom was on her way from Memphis with a lab to sniff Nina out. I just stood where I heard her earlier calling her. She finally cried very loudly. I yelled that I heard her and everyone came that way. There was a huge piece of concrete slab in the woods propped up on a rock. I bent down to look under it and there she was. My sweet baby girl. I yelled that I had found her and everyone came running to me. Andrew tried to get her out and she snapped at him. She was terrified. It took Stuart and Drew to get her out. She was filthy and covered in ticks. By the way, at this point her foster mom was twenty minutes from our house. Andrew called her and offered to let her know we found her. We offered to pay for gas and take her out to dinner. She just said she wasn't going back home and was glad we found her.

So we knew this little girl's name had to reflect our first eveing with her. Andrew threw out suggestions of Fled and Freedom. Neither one of these sound right to me. The next day at work Liberty Belle popped into my head. It was perfect.

So that is our story of how Dopey became Nina and then Liberty Belle Weaver. Needless to say our sweet girl didn't go anywhere near a door without a leash for a VERY long time. We are still a little nuts about it.

Here is the picture that was online at petfinder, and her first picture with her new mommy and daddy.