Spiritual Advisor

Once upon a time there was a little girl named Lyn who loved a song on Sesame Street. The song was called "Me and my Llama". But, Lyn had a problem with the letter "L" - a scary thing for parents who'd blessed their daughter with a name beginning with the offending letter.

But the pronunciation didn't bother Lyn. As far as she was concerned, her name was Yin. She sang "Me and my Yama", and said "I yuv you." All of those are very important things, especially the last phrase.

We teased both her and her twin, because he also had a word problem. He couldn't say his "Y's". So, his sister was named Lyn, and he said, "I love lou". And, of course, he could sing the Sesame Street song *properly* - whatever that means.

I still call Lyn "Yin" or "Yinnie" at times. It's just one of those dumb things that mothers do and the kids learn to deal with it with good humor.

But now we need to fast forward to 2006. That was when we discovered we had our own spiritual advisor(s).

We brought home a pretty dark sable/blue merle Sheltie whose name was Dolly. Since Dolly was ten years old, we felt that changing her name would be rude; besides, she is a doll, and the name is appropriate.



A few months later, another rescue Sheltie stole my heart. I hadn't seen one like this before. She was a color-headed white, which means she's all white on her body except for one spot, but her head is the typical Sheltie sable and white. Her name was Millie.



I despise the name Millie. No offense to anyone so named, but it just makes my nervous system do that little shudder similar to the nails-on-the-chalkboard-thing. So, we knew that she was going to have a name change.

But what? We decided that we'd figure it out after we met her and had her around for awhile. What name would go with Dolly?

We considered "Madison". Dolly - Madison. Even though retail has been a great part of our lives, and we love the little cakes made by said company, Madison just didn't seem right.

Then we considered, of all things, "Parton"...Dolly - Parton. Ummmm. No.

Then when we actually met Millie, we weren't quite expecting what we thought. Millie fit the bill of a really long-legged Sheltie. I mean, this girl has long legs! And fluffy! Oh my.

We considered names as we drove home. Nothing seemed quite right. Until one of us mentioned that she was so long legged and had such fur she really looked like a llama.

And, then we decided maybe we'd take that childhood song of Lyn's and give it to the dog. After all, we didn't want our new dog to think we were confused about what she was, so calling her Llama was not a good plan. But, what if we called her Yama, instead?

We tested the name out on her. She accepted it right away, a big surprise for us. And when we called them into the house later that evening, we figured out that we had our own spiritual advisor.

I mean, after all, how many people can call the Dolly Yama and have an immediate response?