TIFU by naming my dog a slur 🙁

This is from a while back, but it definitely fits here. Back in 2023, my husband and I suddenly adopted a senior dog named Charlie. We aren’t really for basic names like that, so we always said his name like Danny Devito did, “CHAHWLY.” It stuck so hard that we ended up renaming him to Cholly. Cholly was an amazing dog.

We always corrupt our dogs’ names into silly nicknames, and one or two kinda end up unofficially replacing their real name. From Rocky to Bubby, Penny to Peepers, Rosie to Posie, etc.

While playing around with Cholly’s name, I stumbled on Chollywog, like pollywog (another name for tadpoles). And of course, while playing around with that, I… shortened it.

“Come here, Wog! Who’s my little Woggy man??” and boy howdy he loved it. It fit him so well… he was just Woggy! I think my logic was that it sounded like “wonky” or “soggy,” which he definitely was. This went on for too long, until I casually mentioned it at Sunday dinner with my family, when my brother gives me a weird look and informs me that it’s a slur for Indian people. I was crushed. Thankfully I never put this name into writing aside from messaging my husband.

I feel awful, but the name fit so perfectly in my ignorant little world! Perhaps I’m awful, but I still refer to him as that name when talking about him to my husband. We only had him for a year, but he was the specialest dog I’ve ever had. I miss my Cholly ❤️😭

TL;DR I lovingly named my dog a slur