He'd Recall His Dogs by Name

Sometimes--regardless of how sharp our overall memory might be--we recall certain things in sequence. This is probably most easily understood to/by those who us who spend countless hours with the printed dictionary. (If you're not into dictionaries, you can always look at phone books). There, now you know just how old I am!

in any event, if you're looking for a word or a name you have to know the alphabetical order. Most people who are fluent in English can start the A-B-C from any letter and move forward. It's highly unlikely that a person can move backwards with the same fluidity. Chances are, you'd probably know somehow if the letter that you need is ahead or behind.

Example: Let's say you're searching for the word PRACTICE in the dictionary. You start with P is #16 of 26 letter. You probably know that R is nearby (just two more after P). A is the first letter. As for C, well, it's called A-B-C, right. You kind of get the idea.

Before I was a teen, I was a boy scout and as part of that, I had to learn the scout law which is

"A Scout is:

"TRUSTWORTHY, LOYAL, HELPFUL, FRIENDLY, COURTEOUS, KIND, OBEDIENT, CHEERFUL, THRIFTY,
BRAVE, CLEAN, and REVERENT."

Unlike the alphabet, I have to go back to trustworthy when I rattle off this list. The only other list that comes to mind like that of mindless memorization is the chronological list of the Chinese dynasties. Xia, Shang, Zhou, Qin Han, Period of Disunity, Sui, Tang, Song, Yuan, Ming, and Qing

It's like prepping yourself to be a JEOPARDY! contestant.

What's all of this got to do with the subject. Most people I know who have had dogs in their lives have had more than one. I, personally, have only had one and it was inherited by me from a tenant who had died. The dog didn't have what I would call a real name. For whatever strange reason, the owner gave the dog the same name as that of his previous dog. That dog's name was Lucky. Yeah, right, very original. I told him that you can't recycle a dog's name. It's creepy. I thought it was creepy that Maria Theresa of Austria had recycled the names of her children from some that had died.

From Wiki:

Maria Theresa gave birth to sixteen children in nineteen years from 1737 to 1756. Thirteen survived infancy, but only ten survived into adulthood.
The first child, Maria Elisabeth (1737–1740)
Maria Anna
Maria Carolina
Joseph,
Maria Christina,
Maria Elisabeth
Charles
Maria Amalia
Leopold
Maria Carolina (b. & d. 1748).
Maria Johanna
Maria Josepha
Maria Carolina
Ferdinand
Maria Antonia
Maximilian Francis

He was able to talk about his other dogs. Sometimes he would even say which member of the family a dog belonged to "my mother's dog' vs 'my dog'. The dogs all had stories; a personality, a breed or mix, an explanation of how the animal came to join the family. They generally had an elevated status. A child could be mad at a parent or a sibling, but you seldom heard of a child being angry at a dog.

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