Life with Dogs: Why I named my dog Lucid

I named my dog Lucid.  The number one question I get from people, is “you mean like a lucid dream?”  And I supposed that lucid dreams have a lot to do with it, but my infatuation with the word itself goes back way farther.  In fact, when I really think about it, this word sort of floats through the history of my traveling years, spanning from Texas, to sailing around 2o+ countries, to living in Miami, Germany, and Canada…

{please beware… you’re about to experience the way i tell stories.  it’s abstract.  but trust me, it comes together in the end}

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lu⋅cid [adjective]

1. easily understood; completely intelligible or comprehensive: a lucid explanation.

2. characterized by a clear perception or understanding; rational or sane: a lucid moment in his madness.

3. shining or bright.

4. clear; pellucid; transparent.

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When I was about 13 or 14, I started writing bits of poetry and random things.  I’d sit at my computer every day, and start typing before I even knew I had sat down.  This keyboard flight lasted seconds, minutes, and sometimes hours.  I read about two books a day, and thought vocabulary was cool. My inspiring English/Language Arts teacher assigned us unique words to draw and present to the class.  This began my love of words.

The first time I came across the word “lucid” was in a thesaurus around age 15 or 16.  I wrote a stream-of-consciousness piece, and I couldn’t think of a beautiful-sounding, more accurate representation for the word “clear”.  This word was to describe 2 things: water I waded in, and more deeply, my state of mind.

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At age 17, for my senior year of high school, I boarded on tallship, and sailed to and around the Baltic countries of Europe, over to Scotland, down and around to Africa and the Spanish islands of Gran Canaria and the Portuguese island Madeira, across the Atlantic to Trinidad and Tobago, the Guadeloupe island of Les Saintes, over to French Guiana, and finally, Puerto Rico.  Wow that was exhausting and amazing!  I wrote a ton, took lots of photos, and had lots of dreams.

Thus I fell in love with travel, photography, and personal journalism.  I had studied college-level fine arts and graphic design as my electives in high school, and wanted to take my artistry to a new level.  But what level?  After high school, I went to a trade school for advertising and design in Miami, and sponge-soaked up the design software, workflow, and brainstorming techniques.  Art direction, copyrighting, graphic design… I fell in love with the concept, but not with the fast-paced, money-centered world.

I then worked with dogs in Texas at a kennel, where I studied, photographed, and fantasized about training them. I didn’t know schools existed for dog training.  I eventually went back to school for photojournalism, in Victoria, British Columbia.  What I learned was very valuable: I’d rather not work for a newspaper or magazine, also both very fast-paced, sterile environments.  I needed freedom to feel, think and breathe simultaneously.  However, my past flirtation with writing and photography now fledged into a full affair, and both of those skills took off in a rocket ship.

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The first time I remembered a dream, I was 6 years old, and I woke up without an ice cream cone in my hand.  I was so disappointed, I taught myself how to control them.  I wanted to fly.  So fly I did, and fly I do!  Over the years, I have learned how to Lucid Dream.

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After photojournalism school, while pondering life, the opportunity to buy a dog fell into my lap.  I’d been dreaming of this moment since childhood.  I was planning on buying the white male, but the first day I could hold him, he jumped off my lap to explore the room. I put him away because I wanted the one.  I knew that I would spend a lot of time with this friend, and I wanted to start the relationship out right.  ”The brindle one,” suggested the breeder, “pick up that runt.”  I did, and she fell asleep on my chest, my finger in her mouth.  Aaah, the one.  We were both lucid.  We were one.  She was lucid.  And that was that.  I spent 4 weeks visiting her.  From the age of 2 weeks, she knew me, and we simply melted into each others’ existences.

The day I first picked up the brindle runt, her mother, Karma was an anxious mess, checking on her scattered puppies.  Karma jumped on the couch to smell the puppy in my lap. I felt calm and blissful, and looked at the mother with love and admiration, for dogs are such wonderfully simple creatures.  I thought, “I’d like to raise and teach this puppy as my best friend, but I want you to be ok with that.”  I didn’t say anything out loud.  Karma looked into my eyes, licked the puppy in my lap, licked me, looked at me one last time, jumped off the couch, and never came back to check on this puppy for the next 4 weeks.  And Lucid, my dream, my gentle beast, my wild, deeply knowing best friend, never cried or looked for Karma, either.  And it was karma.  Everything I’d ever wanted in a relationship with an animal friend, I now had.  We were one.

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Life has come around full circle since then.  After raising adolescent Lucid while attending a semester of art school, I realized my calling.  I love animals, people, communication, energy, emotions, and of course, art. Therefore, I can’t believe I didn’t see it before.  Now I understand, I was meant to communicate with dogs and their owners, mediating the relationship between the two.  And when I’m not working with them, I delve into my little art world.  This world is my shiny, rainbow clamshell.

Miabella & Lucid

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