Recently I have been asked by more and more people how I came up with the Twitter name ‘SativaBella’ so I figured I would share the story with everyone.

It is no secret that I LOVE puppies (any dog I meet is a puppy, so this includes dogs of all ages).

In October, 2007 I fell in love with this puppy, who was in the window of a pet store (yes I know, I should have adopted/gone to humane society etc, but I didn’t – you can give me grief about that later):

I just could not resist this little wiry furball. She was a Shiba Inu mixed with a Bichon Frise and was not expected to get very big.

My boyfriend at the time had always wanted a Shiba, and I wanted a small dog, so it was perfect! I thought about her for over a week before deciding that I was going to do it, I was going to buy a puppy. My first dog, that was just mine!

My ex already had a puppy of his own, a black Lab mixed with a Golden Retriever named Isabelle:

These two pups were such good friends (despite Tiva sometimes being a little brat)!

After I brought her home, I was struggling with what to name my little furball, so my ex started to give me options: Indica, Squirt, Sativa. I vetoed Indica because my parents puppy was Indiana and we called her Indy for short. Squirt was cute, but not very girly. I really liked the name Sativa, and could call her Tiva for short. It was decided, my new puppy’s name was Sativa!

The next day I drove to my parents house and surprised them with Sativa. They thought she was pretty cute, but questioned the name. I had no idea what it meant! I swear. Turns out it is the scientific name of Cannabis Sativa (if I have to explain this to you, you should probably just go Google it), either way at this point I had already fallen in love with her and the name, so it stuck around.

When I joined Twinkle (and later Twitter) I was trying to come up with a new username because I was getting sick of my old standby from AOL IM days, Buffbabe6108. So I did what most people do when coming up with new usernames and or passwords: looked to my dogs! That was the beginning of my life as Sativabella online.

I was lucky enough to work at an office that allowed me to bring her to work with me. She loved napping on my desk:

Sadly Sativa is no longer with us, as she was hit by a car in August, 2008 and Isabelle is still living in Fort Collins with my ex, but my name and my memories of them live on.

This is my absolute favorite photo of Sativa, sitting in her favorite spot, the stump, in the front yard, smiling:

That is the story of my online persona, what is yours?