A: First, the call name of the dog can be ANYTHING.  You can call your dog Booger for all I care.

Your dog will be named at birth and will be registered as that name.  This is a change from past procedure and is intended to get folks their registration paperwork faster. And it will reduce the confusion some folks have about the way we name pups here.

NAVHDA rules are the litter must be registered as a litter, and the kennel name must appear first or last in order for me to qualify for certain awards.  Marshfield Kennel is a NAVHDA registered kennel for German Shorthaired Pointers and Pointers.  By listing the kennel name first, all Marshfield dogs will appear together in test results booklets.  Both you and I can easily find how the Marshfield dogs do in NAVHDA testing.

NAVHDA rules are the dog’s name must not be longer than 30 letters punctuation and spaces.

There is a tradition that all the dogs from the first litter of a kennel start with A, second start with B, and so on.  This puts litter mates together on alphabetical lists.  You’ll be able to see how your dog’s litter mates perform.  There will be no question about whether or not another Marshfield dog is a litter mate to yours.  It will help me because I will be able to see “B” and know that’s Luke x Dove or "C" and know it's Berkley x Dove.

I’ve typed tens of thousands of dog names into my computer database.  I have developed some prejudices about what makes a good dog name.  Some folks are way too creative, others aren’t creative enough.  One source of good dog names that I think anyone can pick from are the gods, heroes and villains of mythology and history. 

To summarize, I’ll use the name I selected:
Marshfield’s Aoide – “Diva”
(Kennel Name) (Dog Name) – (“Call name”)

Aoide is the Greek muse of song.  I can’t even pronounce Aoide.  Diva is a play on Dove’s name, is Latin for goddess, is used to describe female singers, and implies that their bad behavior is tolerated because of their talent.