So, what's with the "Bear" theme?  Well here goes... It is a tradition among dog breeders to give each litter a theme name, and AKC registered names then follow suit.  Because we love the Portuguese heritage of our dogs, we decided that we'd always use a Portuguese name for our beloved pets' AKC registered names.  When Maquah was born, his breeder, Fabiana Bazzani, asked that we come up with a name that started with "U". Being that we don't speak fluent Portuguese, and didn't know anyone who could translate at the time, we looked up all the "U" Portuguese words we could find--we even bought a Portuguese-English dictionary.  There are not a ton of Portuguese words that start with U, however "Urso" (bear, in english) is dear to us on a personal level, having to do with Chris' Chippewa native american heritage.  So we decided on "Urso do Mar" which roughly translates to "Sea Bear".  And because Maquah is from Italy, we added "do Lusiadas" (Fabiana's kennel name) at the end. To further complicate matters, rather than making his call name "seabear" or "bear", we decided to use the Chippewa translation of bear, "Maquah."  We also enjoy watching people try to pronounce the whole lot ;-) Fabiana blessed the name, there was a flight over from Italy and the rest is history.  Soooo, since we named Cocoa's first litter around desserts, (Cocoa & Baker, the parents); it only seemed fitting that Maquah should get his 15 minutes of fame.  And there are tons of wonderfully smart, cute names that have "bear" in them.

Maquah doing his best bear imitation Some Possible Pup Names... Avida's Smokey the Bear Avida's Pooh Bear Avida's Beddlington Bear Avida's Kodiak Bear (Kody) Avida's Burberry Bear Avida's Theodore Bear (Theo or Teddy) Avida's Sweet Baby Bear Avida's Balou Bear Avida's Grizzley Adams Avida's Gentle Ben Avida's Yogi Bear Avida's BooBoo Bear Avida's Briar Bear Avida's Paddington Bear Avida's Sweet Honey Bear Avida's Briar Bear Avida's Bad News Bear Avida's Teddy RuxBear Avida's PawPaw Bear Avida's Cindy Bear Avida's Bongo the Wonder Bear Avida's Nisha Bear or... Avida's Bear Necessity Avida's Bear Naked Lady Avida's Grin & Bear It