While most rescue dogs come with their names already picked out, some owners choose to change them to something more meaningful to them.
A man has upset his deeply-religious parents by changing his puppy's name to "something far from Christianity" following a mix up with the animal's gender.
Explaining how the animal shelter named his puppy Lucy because it was down as a girl on their paperwork, he quickly realised Lucy was actually a little boy.
Speaking to Reddit, he said: "I found out he was a boy but he already responded to his name so I jokingly just lengthened it to Lucifer and I call him Luci."
However, this didn't go down well with his priest dad as not only was he against the puppy's new name, but he also considers dogs to be "the devil's animal".
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He added: "I grew up with cats. As the opposite of dogs, they were obviously the opposite of hell - so heaven's animals.
"When they found out I was getting a dog, he prayed for me.
"I never really believed in all the Jesus stuff, and if you ask anyone my dog is named after Lucifer from the show, not the literal Devil, because to me he doesn't exist."
After posting a picture of his puppy on Instagram with his new name, his mum rang him up crying her eyes out and tried to convince him to get rid of his dog.
"My mum called me, sobbing, saying I'd been preyed upon and I needed to get rid of my dog immediately," he said.
"After a while I explained he hadn't forced me to give him that name because he's a dog. All he knows is poop on mum's floor and eat her expensive shoes and I chose it for him.
"Since then they have been begging for me to change it. It's a name, so I'm thinking it's pretty funny.
"Jokes aside, it's getting really serious. Like, my dad showed up to baptise my dog kind of serious. I told him to f*** off, and told them they were all blowing it was out of proportion.
"My girlfriend thinks we should just change his name to appease them, and I am thinking we may have to, but I really don't want to. He's my dog, and I should be allowed to name him whatever the f*** I want."
While most users shared their shock at his parent's reaction, others came up with 'genius' solutions to try to appease his parents.
One user said: "Make your parents happy and tell them the dog's name is Louis Christian Fur."
Another user added: "Really damn weird he thinks dogs are evil, when they have been given the title man's best friend. My step dad had a dog he named Psycho when he was a kid, and he loved to yell it out."
A third user said: "I’m just stumped on how a shelter managed to misgender a dog."
Does your dog have an unusual name? Email paige.freshwater@reachplc.com.
