For The Love of Mika!

We spent most of the time on the drive down to the breeder and most of the drive back talking about what to name "the puppy".

We went through a whole bunch of names, but we couldn't find anything that we both agreed on. The breeder affectionately called her "Patch" because she has a tiny white crest on her chest, but that didn't feel right to us. We had about a week to think about it and get back to him so that he could submit her papers. The pressure was on!

Finally when we were on the final stretch of highway on the way home, in the final 20 minutes of our 6 hour journey there and back again, we had a breakthrough.

I was driving and looked over and said, "How about Mika?"

At that moment, puppy looked up at me. Dad mulled the name over and said a tentative, "I like that one".

We've been asked since if we named her after the singer Mika. The answer is no. We lived in Japan for a while and have a beautiful friend called Mika, whose name we love because it's short, elegant and sounds cute. The name itself appears to have several meanings, but the one we giggled over the most was "beautiful fragrance", because there were times there on the drive home when the fragrance was anything but beautiful!