My father was a hunter and growing up, we always had 1 or more hunting dogs in the house. After my father died (years ago) my mom gave me the lamp from his desk with a hunting scene on it; the scene included dogs very much like my father's.
One day, when trying to come up with a screen name on AOL, to use with one of those free 30 day floppy disks -- I wanted something unique so that I would not need to use numbers in the name. I looked at the lamp and 'birddog' came to mind. I have used it in many places since then.
I have also used 'hairy_moth' because, one day, when I looked around the room...
