How to Change a Dog’s Name

Our four-legged friends have been with us as pets and working animals for more than ten thousand years. They have adapted to us (and we to them) in such a way that it is almost impossible to imagine life without their company and without the usefulness of their work. And it is that dogs come to love us unconditionally, even when sometimes humans do not deserve it or do not treat them in the best way, or even abandon them to their fate.

Reasons to change the name of a dog.

Sometimes a dog must change homes and not precisely because it is abandoned. Perhaps its owner becomes ill and is not able to care for it properly, or a change of residence to places where pets are not allowed forces it to be put up for adoption. If we have educated him well and he is a friendly animal (to which we must have contributed with much affection) he will surely do well in his new family and will be welcomed wonderfully, just as he is. But also their new owners may want a “little” modification: change the dog’s name (we may have been too creative with this) and give it a new one.

Change the name? So that?

Ideally, it should keep its name (especially for our convenience or if the dog is too old). For dogs, unlike us humans, the name is simply a sound that we use to identify them, call them, order them to do something and, above all, to give them food. It is really more important for us than for them, because they do not understand the meaning of the words, but they learn to relate the sound of these with what we ourselves emphasize that they assimilate.

In other words, while for humans changing their name can have symbolic, philosophical meanings and a whole series of concepts with which we complicate our lives on a daily basis, for them this is as simple as that from tomorrow the ham steak is called something else form. Whatever you call it, it will remain the same: something delicious, that has the same ingredients, tastes and smells the same. Ok, it is a strange example, but it serves to understand.

In the early stages of the dog’s life, the name basically means “take, your food”. And for them it doesn’t matter if we call them Napoleon or Bonita, because, we repeat, they don’t know what those words mean to us. What they do know is that when we pronounce them we will feed them. They’ll give us all the attention in the world when we make that sound.

Conditioned (or conditional) reflex

Yes, that is what this seemingly daily and unimportant action is scientifically called. In serious words, it is nothing more than the natural reaction to an unnatural stimulus or one that should not cause such a reaction.

It was the Russian scientist Ivan Pavlov who discovered it, doing experiments with dogs (in which none were harmed), back in 1901. Pavlov played a metronome while feeding the dogs, and discovered that after a while repeating this routine, when the metronome sounded without being given food, the biological response of the dogs was identical: they became excited and produced the same amount of saliva as when they were in the presence of food.

This could only mean one thing: the dogs, through repetition, learned to associate the sound of the metronome with food and no longer needed to be in the presence of food to react. They knew that one thing accompanied the other.

Constant repetition is essential.

This discovery revolutionized the world of psychology and physiology, something that for now, although it has been very important (and some professor faints if we say so), we will leave aside. Let’s focus on the dogs and their names. When they are puppies, what we do is precisely that: call them by the name we have chosen while waving a succulent morsel before their little snouts.

The first few times they will barely pay attention to us (they certainly won’t ignore the food), but with constant repetition the puppies learn that that sound, their name, means that they will receive food, or affection, or both. And they will never forget it as long as we don’t stop calling them with that particular sound.

And how do we change it?

Once we have become familiar with the animal and gained its trust, we will follow these steps.

Instructions for renaming a dog

1. The first, although not essential, would be much easier if the new name had a similar sound to the old one.

2. The second thing we need is patience, higher doses the older the dog is, since it is not easy to erase several years of habit in one breath.

3. Third and most important, some tasty treat. And get to work.

Basically we will make the dog associate the treat with the name we are trying to give it. We will approach, we will call him by the new name and then we will give him a small piece of the candy, or even sometimes it is enough that he smells it a little and we leave him wanting.

It doesn’t matter if he barely reacts to the new name at first (he just doesn’t know it’s his own yet). We will repeat the action with great patience and as many times as possible without crowding it too much. As we repeat the action of giving him food, we will move away little by little, so the dog will understand that the sound and the food come together and that if he approaches us he will have a prize.

Taking time is the key to renaming dogs.

The task will be fully completed as the days go by, as we use more of his new name to give him food or affection. It is important to clarify that not all dogs react the same, and that some may take longer to learn while others achieve it very quickly. But with due patience and perseverance, we will certainly succeed.