puppypants.

Because we are obnoxious dog people with an obnoxious dog, Josh and I regularly talk to an animal that is incapable of higher thought. But this is not a problem, because we also answer ourselves in an enthusiastic, yet dopey voice. I'd be embarrassed, except that I've found a lot of obnoxious dog people do this. Once, after discussing the voices we use for our pets, a lady at work asked me, "Do you ever wonder if you're getting their voices wrong?"

I told her that it was my dog and that I could project whatever personality I wanted on her.

Her tag says "REMIX," but her full name is Remix Stratocaster Puppypants. I had a classmate in elementary school who had some outlandishly-named hamsters. I think one of them was Whiskey Cheeseball. I thought I was pretty good at naming pets, what with my cat Complainy and all, but this girl was a step ahead.

We most often refer to the dog as "Puppypants." In fact, I've used that word so many times in text messages to Josh that it has been added to my phone's dictionary of autocomplete words. We came up with it sometime in the first week that we had her. It's just fun to say. Try it. I'll wait.

(Waiting)

See? Isn't that fun? It's so fun that I use it sometimes to refer to other dogs. Whenever I see another pitbull around town, I refer to it as a puppypants, like it's a breed. Maybe if we called them all that, they'd have a better reputation. Somebody call the AKC.

No, but the funnest thing is that other people now use that word. Trevor calls her Puppypants, and he says it as if it's a completely normal thing to say. And then my sister told me a story about her dog, who she referred to as Mr. Puppypants. I tell ya, it is a gratifying thing to invent a word and have other people adopt it. Particularly when it's such a very silly word. I feel like I've made the world a slightly better place, just by injecting a little silliness into it.

So please, feel free to use your new word, whenever and wherever you like. But remember, this was the first one.