"Just Chillin", named by as best we can tell, by third owners back. When we first seen her, I didnt like the name as it sounded funky and wanted to change it to "Lottie", or "My Lady".
Lottie and Luke were rescue pups we took in several years ago. Rather than German Short Hair mixes as we were told, we later found their original rescuers down in Mobile AL who said they were pure bred Blue Ticks. Luke was the lazy man of the house, Lottie was a runner. As she aged, and especially after we got down here in the Ozarks, she would take off and be gone for hours. Those excursions became longer and longer, coming back more and more tore up and exhausted, bleeding feet, broken nails, sleep three days, eat voraciously, and take off again. One day she just didnt come back.
A year or so earlier I found this antique scrap book full of old magazine clippings. It was neat and cheap so I bought it. As we paged through it, we came across a print of a painting of a row boat on the water, with a black and white dog riding in it all by himself. The dog looked almost exactly like Luke. The name painted across the stern is Lottie, which blew me away. I dont know why, but I instantly knew she would be gone soon. And I always thought I would someday like to name a boat after her.
Back in the late 70's my brother in law built a small wooden boat. She was an odd little thing, she had a tiny little house at the front, a wide transom, and big bench seats down each side. She looked like a little tug boat and he named her "My Lady", after the Moody Blues song. That too I always liked.
We had all been thinking of names, when one day I brought home a pack of papers and manuals from the boat, and found a log book those owners had made when they owned her. In the book it discussed why they named her that, it was their escape, their weekend cabin. They came out here to "just chill". As we read the book, we knew we could never change her name, and she has become for us what she was for them. But Lottie will always be out there too.
