It has been seven years since my fourth and last Doberman Pinscher died. I have thought about, maybe, some day, getting another one. Someone I used to work with said you can’t be loyal to a dog, but you can be loyal to a breed. But for some reason, I have mixed feelings about getting another Doberman. Maybe it’s because I’m trying to be loyal to a dog.

So occasionally when I think about another dog, I think about a breed other than a Doberman. One day about a month ago I told Leah, “Hey, we should get a Great Dane!”

Imagine a dog bigger than Leah! Imagine him lying on the sofa with us, or pushing us off the bed at night, if we let him sleep in bed with us. Imagine how much dog food he would eat. Imagine walking him. I used to think a Doberman was a big dog until I saw one of mine standing next to a Great Dane.

Planning for a new dog is not an urgent problem. We have three dogs, which is, at a minimum, one too many. Two is a full house, three is a madhouse. Of course Zeke is getting old. We will have had him 11 years this summer, so he will be at least 12. He’s still healthy, but he’s a graybeard now. Lucy is also a graybeard. We don’t know how old she is, maybe 12, maybe 14. She, too, is old but showing no signs of declining health. Sam is a real youngster. So I doubt that our dog roster will get any shorter for a while. But isn’t it good to plan?

So I was thinking, if we get a Great Dane, what will we name him? I’m not great at choosing names. Not an urgent problem, but no harm in checking, right? So what about naming him (or her) after one of the kings of Denmark?

I Googled the kings of Denmark, searching for a good dog name. I was amazed to see that the list goes back more than 1000 years, to Gorm the Old, who reigned from around 940 to 958 AD. He died at about 58 years old. Gorm? I don’t think so.

Then there are Harald, Sweyn, Cnut and Harthacnut. Harald is a possibility, but I don’t think I like it. Sweyn is too hard to say. Cnut (even Cnut the Great) won’t work. For one thing, it violates my first rule for naming dogs: you must be able to visualize yourself shouting the name at the top of your lungs, and you cannot shout Cnut. No way. Harthacnut is ridiculously long for a dog’s name, plus there’s that “cnut” hiding at the end.

Magnus the Good might work. Magnus was a bastard child who died without children at age 23 on 25 October 1047. I wonder how true that date is, and if it has been adjusted for changes in the calendar.

Olaf, Eric and Niels don’t seem like dog names. Valdemar is too much like a fantasy villain. Abel might work, but Christopher doesn’t. There are a lot of Christians and Fredericks, definitely not dog names.

The one thing the kings of Denmark seem to have in common, along with names unsuitable for a dog, was that most of them died young. Most of those who did not die in their 20’s or 30’s died before 60. A very few of the ancient kings of Denmark lived into their 70’s. The oldest I could find was Christian IX, who died in 1906 at age 87, a remarkable outlier. Of course the more recent kings or queens generally lived somewhat longer than the ancient kings of Denmark. But most of the kings of Denmark were younger than I am when they died.

I did not find a good king’s name for a Great Dane, except for possibly Magnus, but looking at their ages at death made me think about something else. When we humans get a pet dog or cat, we have to prepare ourselves for the fact that that dog or cat is almost certainly going to die before we do. That’s true for most of our lives, but at some point, at some age, we have to understand that a new dog or cat could well outlive us.

Leah would like to have a Siamese cat, like she used to have, one that might provide some of the emotional interaction that none of our current cats does. I would like to have another Doberman, or maybe a Great Dane. Neither of us is morbidly waiting around for our current cats and dogs to die, but, realistically, they probably will all die before we do. And at that point we have to think about how we will ensure that our responsibilities to any new cat or dog are carried out if our pets outlive us. Neither of us expects to die any time soon, but both of us are at an age that, if a 30-year-old read the obituary, they wouldn’t say, “They died so young!”

Maybe we should consider adopting senior pets, if we live long enough.