This is Shandi. She’s a new addition to our family.

The story of Shandi goes back about 28 years. Shandi was what I wanted my daughter’s name to be. I was totally overruled, but we settled on Kelsi (with an ‘i’). I have no idea why I had the obsession with the name. It came from a 1980 KISS song from the Unmasked album. The name always stuck with me.

When I met my wife, she had a beautiful and smart dog named Nikita – after the Elton John song. We had to put her down years ago – it was heartbreaking for all of us.   We didn’t want to go through that again.

Years pass, and my wife wants to get a dog. I say it’s ok if I get “naming rights”. She agrees and we find this beautiful little dog at a shelter that we fell in love with immediately.

The name Shandi has been a family joke forever, because I was so stuck on it. I won this time and was able to text my daughter, after all this time, the following:

“After 28 years, I finally got my Shandi”.

Addendum:   I got “Elizabeth” too, also a KISS song.    I steered away from Christine.