Years ago, way back in the pre-Jurassic era of 2003, when we began The Blissful Dog Journey, the name The Blissful Dog popped into my head almost immediately. I had just discovered Joseph Campbell's work with the whole Follow Your Bliss idea and was bedazzled by that concept.
“If you do follow your bliss you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living. Follow your bliss and don’t be afraid, and doors will open where you didn’t know they were going to be.”
I agonized and pondered and tried on many different business names, but I kept circling back to The Blissful Dog. I knew I wanted it to express a happy, content dog cared for by a loving, attentive person. I also wanted to follow good business practices and common sense.
Naming your business can be one of the factors that sets the tone for the entire business. What kind of vibe, mood, image do you want to project? Many people name their pet related business after their dog. While I "get" that, I knew it would make me sad in years to come to have my business name be that of my dog that had passed. Plus, I didn't want any future dogs to feel left out!
I also knew that any business name needed to be easy to pronounce and spell. That was my only small concern with The Blissful Dog. Sometimes people put two LLs on Blissful. But, that small blip was nothing like naming a business Le Capricious Capricornian Couture Creatures.
Of course, I made sure no one else was using The Blissful Dog as a business name in the same area and no one was. There are Blissful Dog bakeries,dog training facilities and kennels, but no one making products. I was IN!
After all this research, I meandered over to GoDaddy to snag the domain name. Keep in mind, in 2003 we did not check .com availability FIRST, like we do now. There had not been the stampede to snatch up every imaginable name with a .com back then. I was crushed when BlissfulDog.com was taken. I had searched and Googled and not found anyone using that business name, so I was a bit baffled. After digging a bit deeper, I discovered the name was being "squatted on" by a company that bought names in the effort to resell them for big bucks. Since it was not being used and they wanted thousands for it, I felt comfortable in going forward with THE Blissful Dog.
After a big exhale, I was off and running with THE Blissful Dog and never looked back!
Enough with the geeky .com drama, let's move on to WHAT a Blissful Dog IS!
Bu the way...I actually FINALLY bought BlissfulDog.com in April of 2018. Whew!
This post, this website and my entire business and the work of my growing team is dedicated to helping make YOUR dog's life a bit more blissful. Thank you for letting us share in helping your dog be a blissful dog!
Below is our Great Pyrenees, Zoe, blissfully rolling in the snow. If I remember right it was 20 or so below zero that day and she was ecstatic. Zoe is now rolling in the snow on the other side of the Rainbow Bridge and I know she's blissfully keep an eye on us.