Would it be weird (or workable) to change our dog's name?

[BorntoDillyDally]

We have a 5 year old rescue dog. He has been with us now for 3 years.

I have never liked his name for a few reasons. The first is because it is the name given to him by his first owners, the ones who abused him and have caused him to be the very anxious and reactive little doggie that he is. The other reason is because it is horribly common and I just hate saying his name out in public, ridiculous, I know.

I have always given all of my pets human names - cats, dogs, guinea pigs and even our fish have all had human names.

Not sure why we didn't change his name as soon as we got him but I supposed I thought he wouldn't get used to it at 2 years old but is it too late now at 5 years old?

It's not a major thing I know but I wonder if anyone has changed their dog's name to a more suitable one and they got used to it?

Now we know why so few babies are called Nigel.

My dog will respond to literally anything in a sing-song voice. I just went in the other room while my dog was lying under the table and called 'tomato', and in he trotted. Waited a bit, then went in a different room and called 'hey undies' and sure enough, he wandered in.

Not sure if this makes him incredibly clever or a total dumbass.

Change his name if you want 😊

weve always changed our rescues names, never had an issue.

We changed our rescue dogs name as it was alst identical to our existing dogs name, and it was very hard to distinguish between them! She never seemed to know her old name and now totally responds to the new one. She was 2 when we changed her name.

Can I just say that your dog is adorable?
He looks very like my dog who is a (mostly) Norfolk terrier.
so glad Bear is with loving owners
x

I think you can definitely change his name if you don’t like it. Dogs learn new things pretty quickly. My mum changed the name of her rescue to a derivative of it. He knew his new name very quickly.

What about Bert? It sounds similar to Bear

Funny, my first thought was Jeffrey! He’s so cute OP

I can totally see why you want to change it given his history (and think you should go for it) - but am intrigued that you think Bear is common.
Bear Grylls went to Eton

@Wonderfulequipment , but Bear isn't Mr Grylls' birth certificate name.
It might be a common dog name where OP lives.

If OP meant she didn't like the name because of it being downmarket, it is a celebrity-inspired name. Baby name explorer

Just start calling him Teddy (Bear)

My dog has a lot of nicknames and he responds to all. His name is Rocco but also Boo and other variations . Her also knows he’s the ‘Dog’ and gets excited when we say it. He knows we are talking about him.

Family have had all sorts of silly nicknames for dogs that have changed over the years. I think he'll be fine if it's said with affection.

I think he would pick it up quickly. If he struggles you could called him one that sounds similar e.g Pierre.

I think he looks like a Rufus.

What a gorgeous boy!

Our last cat had a name we really didn’t like, but we adopted her aged three directly from her previous family who had had her since she was a kitten so she definitely knew it. We changed it to something that had similar sounds - eg Cathy to Daphne type thing - and just said her name every time we spoke to her.

After we sadly had to have her pts last year, we adopted a little boy cat called Louie. I started to call him Louie-Booie, and now he often just gets Boo, or Lou-bot. He had been a stray kitten and had no name until he was one (😭).

Teddy is too popular as a dog's name.