Decoding Westminster Kennel Club Show Dogs’ Quirky, Tongue-Twisting Names

They have names that could make a random password generator cry uncle. Meet, for example, GCHG CH Calicops Sassafras Gonnakikurass. “She’s a saucy girl,” Fred Ortiz said as he groomed the Brussels griffon to compete at last year’s Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show. “Her name says it all.” Her name says … what exactly? Well, ponder the final part, and you may understand what her owners are wryly getting at. But in any event, you can just call her Wrassy. This year’s main competition begins Monday with breed-by-breed judging that leads to the most illustrious Best in Show prize, awarded Tuesday night. Agility and obedience contests, as well as other events, were held on Saturday. If show dogs are the aristocrats of the canine world, they often have the names, titles and nicknames to match. Their “registered,” or formal, names are the ones used for showing. Those long, confounding-sounding appellations are actually packed with show-dog information. Clumps of capital letters at the beginning, and sometimes also the end, signify the dogs’ achievements in various sports. “GCHG” and “CH,” for example, denote various levels of championship in the traditional, breed-by-breed judging. After those titles, the first word in a registered name generally indicates the kennel, or breeding program, that produced the dog. Other kennels or dogs in the pedigree might get a shout-out at the end. Meanwhile, show dogs have “call names” that they go by on a day-to-day basis. A dog might also have had a different “puppy name” bestowed by its breeder and later changed by its eventual owner. The portmanteau words and puzzling phrases in registered names are partly meant to avoid duplication with other dogs in registries that go back over a century. But many breeders also use patterns to help them remember which litter was which, or just to have fun. Rachel Adams and Alberto Montila, a Monterey, California-based couple, are professional dog handlers who sometimes breed miniature schnauzers. The litters are named in alphabetical order — one litter had names that started with “A,” the next with “B,” and so on — to make it easy to remember later which dog came from which group of puppies, Adams said Monday. She was blow-drying one of her husband’s clients’ charges, a French bulldog named GCHG CH Elysium’s Adventurous Rapscallion D’Assisi, better known as Finn. Colton Johnson and his family name their litters of Old English Sheepdogs by themes, such as songs, movies, money, or — appropriately — fluffy things. One of those “fluff” pups is GCH CH Bugaboo’s Give Me S’more, who lolled on a table while Johnson brushed him Monday. “It’s his spa day,” joked Johnson, of Colorado Springs, Colorado. The dog’s call name is Graham, as in the crackers that join toasted marshmallow and chocolate to make s’mores. The Johnsons considered calling him Marsh or Mallow, but those names didn’t stick. Three-year-old Graham is a grandson of Swagger, the Old English Sheepdog whom Johnson handled to a second-place finish at Westminster in 2013. Johnson grew up with the happy-go-lucky herding dogs and has bred them for years, differentiating puppies with color — a dot of nail polish on the coat — instead of giving them names. “That way, we don’t get too attached” to the ones that will go to other homes, he said. Reporting by The Associated Press.