Mine That Bird?

How do they come up with these racehorse names? No matter. A 50-1 longshot by any other name is just as sweet. And that he was trained in New Mexico by a cowboy is just icing on the cake. Who doesn't love a fairy tale that comes true?

I'm often asked how I came up with the names for my animals. In case you've been wondering, here's the scoop.

It started with Wynonna. I had selected a perfectly good name for her before I picked her up (Oprah), but that changed on the ride home. She was nestled in a tub of straw in the back of my Jeep. Just as I was pulling onto the highway, she jumped out of the tub and into the front seat. The song playing on the radio was "I Saw the Light" by Wynonna Judd. It was fate.

I brought home two Nigerian Dwarf goats a few months later, and they were without names for almost a week. They were inseparable, so I knew I had to think of names that were always said together. As I looked out the window and watched them hanging out with Wynonna, it just came to me – Waylon (Jennings) and Willie (Nelson). Now we had a theme started.



When I found the horse of my dreams a year later, her AQHA name was Spanish Petticoat, and her owner called her Petti. No way. Not acceptable. She became Emmy Lou (Harris) the minute she stepped onto my property.



Then I decided to let Emmy Lou have a foal. I had eleven months to think up names for the newborn and came up with a whole list of options, but nothing was finalized until the moment the colt popped out. Everything about him was unique, and Lyle (Lovett) fit him just right.



Emmy Lou passed on seven months later, and along came a Paint named Cochise. He was the perfect horse for me, except for his name. I liked the simplicity of "Buck" but had been warned about self-fulfilling prophecies. I went with Hank (Williams, Sr.) instead, and it fits him perfectly. Though in our early years together, Buck would have been more appropriate.



Along the way, I started raising laying hens. Collectively, they were the Dixie Chicks, and individually they were just Dixie, Dixie and Dixie, since it was pretty hard to tell them apart. And the indoor cats came along, too, but they seemed more floral than choral, and so were named Rosebud, Daffodil, and Snapdragon - aka Snapper.

And then came a new puppy, to fill the hole in my heart left by my beloved yellow lab Annie (Oakley), who was named before the whole theme thing got started. The St. Francis Animal Sanctuary called the puppy Grace, but that didn't suit her at all. She had been at the 7MSN for over a week and remained nameless, but every time I wanted her attention, I made that smooch sound and she would come to me. One day I just gave up on trying to think of the perfect name and decided to call her Smooch. Which turned out to be the perfect name.



And then came the burros. It was time to have animals in my barn named after my favorite country singers of all time – George (Strait) and Alan (Jackson). But there was a glitch. My father's name is George and I wasn't sure how he'd feel about having an ass in the family with the same name. Turns out he was honored.



By the time a new barn cat came along last spring, I had exhausted the theme of "country music singers with instantly identifiable first names whose music I liked." So a new theme was born - names from my favorite western of all time. My crystal ball isn't telling me who might join us in the future, but you can bet they will be called Woodrow or Gus or Clara or Lorena, to join Deets in this cast of characters.