When we were kids we had a lot of animals out on the ranch. Quite a few dogs came and went. Most of them were Chesapeake Bay Retrievers that Bob would train to be his duck hunting dogs. Well, we had several of those dogs that were killed by cars on old Jensen avenue in front of the house. But the convenient thing about it was that every time they died and we replaced them, we would just name them the same exact thing but put a number on the end of it.
Chessy 1
Yep. Chessy 1. Chessy 2. Chessy 3. Not even sure how many of them there were because we always eventually got rid of the number and called them plain old Chessy. The last one (the best one) lasted till an old age of 13 or so before dying of natural causes.
This naming convention wasn’t only used for Chessy though. This extended to our parakeet bird which was named Bird Bird (and subsequent BB’s). And also to Grandma and Grandpa Yamakawa’s dogs which were called Lucky. Lucky(s), unlike his/her name, were probably the most unlucky dog(s) in the world and spent their time chained up in their frontyard, barking and being yelled at in Japanese curse words by Grandpa until they would finally go mad and commit suicide on the street.
As you can tell, we had rather stupid names for our pets. Chessy (for Chesapeake), Bird Bird, Mitty Kitty, Rambo, Hitler, Deformity, JC (Junk Kitty), Bear Bear, Ziggy, Goatie – to name a few of the many pets we went through out on the ranch.
Basically it all boils down to the fact that you didn’t want to be a pet in the Robesky family household anytime Graham and I were children because you would inevitably end up dead on the street, dressed in my clothes, attached to my bicycle inside of a laundry basket, in the freezer, thrown off of a tree or inflicted with various other methods of torture until Bob and Mom gave you away to the neighbours.
