On
September 1, 1997, The Good Shepherd Association announced its
name change to Intermountain Therapy Animals.
There were many good reasons for making this change. We realized that we were spending a lot of time up front explaining what our name meant--the most common misconception being that we were a religious organization, since the term “Good Shepherd” is most commonly used in a Christian context. Some time back, we added a German Shepherd image to our logo to dispel this misconception, only to find that that led to other ones: that we only accepted German Shepherds, or only dogs.
We held a contest among our members, who submitted over 40 different suggestions for a new name. The Board of Directors then held a long, lively and impassioned discussion (open to any who wanted to attend) to come up with 2-3 final possibilities for which the membership could vote. The 13 people present for that discussion came in with, probably, 13 preferences but, as is often the case in these matters, one solution began to rise above the rest and evolve very clearly as the best one, and in the end, all 13 people were unanimous in their preference.
There were many factors to consider in deciding: on appropriate new name options for The Good Shepherd Association, and the board took this responsibility very seriously because our name, much like our mission, will shape and influence both our identity and our direction.
- First, we wanted our new name to actually say what we do and who we are, without requiring a long explanation, The Good Shepherd Association says nothing about what the group does, for example, and many other suggestions, while interesting, clever, and memorable, would have required varying amounts of explanation for someone to know what our group does; for example, Pawsitive Healing, The Animal Advantage, or The Human Animal Connection.
- Next, we wanted the name to sound very dignified and professional, because we are a serious commodity, at the cutting edge of some new therapies, and in order to be taken seriously by the health care professions, the corporate and foundation funding sources that we approach, and even academic institutions (should we decide to participate in research projects relating to animal-assisted therapy), we want the world to know we are professional in every sense of the word. That criterion eliminated many possible names that were warm and fuzzy and elicited a lot of heartfelt response, but we felt it was appropriate to be more serious at this point in our evolution.
- We decided to eliminate the word PAWS from the potential name, despite how much many love it, as well as any official reference to “four-footed,” because it limits the implied definition of therapy animals. Birds, for instance, don't have paws, nor do hooved animals like our pygmy goat therapist. We also eliminated any reference to “Utah” to not restrict any future possible direction of growth, even though we have no immediate plans to expand beyond our state borders.
- The name also needed to survive a legal name search, which eliminated one fairly popular choice, Therapet, which is crisp and short and very descriptive of what we do-but the group Therapy Dogs International already officially uses the word therapet to describe all their member animals.
- In the perfect solution, all three elements--our group name, the tag line and our logo--would all be complementary but not repetitive. They would each contribute to illuminating the description of what we do. For example, it would waste a communication opportunity to repeat any word, such as “paws,” in both name and tag line. Similarly, we didn't need to repeat in words what the logo already communicates visually: a paw touching a heart.
- Then, to further test our reactions, we “tried on” various name for size by imagining how we would feel talking about us and what we do in various circumstances (such as, on the radio or TV, in front of an audience of therapists, reading about us in print; explaining it to family and friends and strangers and other professionals; answering the phone with it; etc.) We ended up with two possibilities for a group name, and two for the tag line. These were again submitted to the membership for a vote, and the clear winner was Intermountain Therapy Animals.
The person who submitted the winning name was known only to the Executive Director until our annual picnic on August 23rd, at which time she was given a few tokens of our appreciation.
Appropriately, perhaps, that person was Paulette Bethel, one of TGSA's founders.
We hope our wider audience of clients, facilities, friends and supporters will appreciate the leap we are making with this new name, and will adapt as easily to hearing our new name as we have!
For anyone who has additional questions about this process, I would welcome a call at 277-7761 or 277-8271. And so, bring on the future!
-- Kathy Klotz
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