“Buffy? Why would you name your dog that?!?”

Buffy the Vampire Slayer (BTVS) is one of the greatest television shows ever. Time included BTVS in their "100 Best TV Shows of All Time feature. Entertainment Weekly ranked this show number 10 on its list of top 100 television shows from 1983 to 2008 and TV Guide two BTVS episodes on its list of top 100 episodes of all time at #14 and #78.

To people who have never watched BTVS, it's is a campy show for teenage girls that features painful 1990s fashion, laughable bad special effects, and ridiculous plot lines. In reality, BTVS features an amazing ensemble cast, incredible writing and some of the most powerful stories about the human condition you will ever see on television. BTVS is a seamless amalgamation of almost every television genre including: drama, horror, soap-operas, comedies, suspense, mystery, science-fiction and even musicals.

Honestly though, the critical merits of the BTVS had nothing to do with why we named our dog after this show. If that was our plan our dog would be name Casablanca.

While we were planning on getting Buffy one of the questions I asked people was how they came up with their dog’s name. Some people name their dogs after someone they know. Others have a nonsensical name that they enjoy like Weebles or Bitsy. However, most people I talked to named their dog after something in their lives they were a fan of.

Before you conclude that it’s “geeky” to name our dog after a television show like BTVS or conclude that we are “dorky” for even enjoying the show, think about this. There are Cubs fans who can name every player on the team, who watch every single game, read about the team in the newspaper and spend time debating with their friends results and future predictions. Is that really all that different then being able to name the titles to all of the episodes of a show, know the names of the actors and writers, watch episodes, read analysis of episodes and debate the merits of different plot points?

Being fascinated and passionately engrossed in something like sports, music, television, books, is an beautiful thing. It connects us to people around us who share our passion and enriches our lives through meaningful experiences that define who we are. The only difference between being passionate about the Cubs and Star Trek is that for some irrational reason our society considers one “cool” and the other one “geely.” There is nothing innately “cooler” about sports, so let’s get our heads out of middle school.

Embrace what you love and embrace what your friends love. It’s a beautiful thing to hear about people talking about what they love and it’s a horrible feeling to have something that is very meaningful be degraded as not being “cool.”

BTVS is my wife and I’s favorite television show of all time, but there’s more to naming our dog Buffy than advertising to the world that we enjoy this show.

When I hear the name Buffy, I think of the my friend Jen, who harassed me for years to give BTVS a chance. I think of my favorite podcast Comic Geek Speak, that did an episode about BTVS that finally convinced me to give the show a chance, but most of all I think what it means to share my life with my wife, Diana.

I remember having to convince Diana to watch the first episode and watching her skepticism melt away into excitement. There were moments in the seven seasons like that made us cry, laugh and rejoice. I remember finishing the final episode and seeing the smile on Diana’s face and reveling in the fact that she loved the show so much that the next day she began re-watching the show. In some ways, Diana loves this show even more than I do and it warms my heart knowing that I was able to introduce her to something that has brought her so much joy.

We knew that getting a puppy would not be my thing or Diana’s thing, it would be something that we would share in our lives. So it only made sense that the name Buffy, a name that instantly reminds us of the meaning that comes from sharing my life with Diana would be the perfect name for our new puppy.

Anyways, someone has to stand against the vampires, the demons and the forces of darkness. It might as well be the dog.