Via Reddit

A Columbia Heights resident is looking for his pet dog, which went missing Sunday afternoon after it crawled underneath a fence and into the great wide open. Michael Wilkinson usually calls his toy poodle mix “Tiny” or “Tiny Buttons,” but the dog’s real name is way better: deathray_2000.

The dog got her name when Wilkinson, who lives on the 4100 block of Arkansas Avenue NW, adopted her in September 2009 from the Washington Animal Rescue League. She wasn’t Wilkinson’s first choice, though. The name, however, has a great backstory.

At first, Wilkinson was hoping to adopt a Yorkshire terrier named Jingle. After meeting the little barker with the sweet disposition, Wilkinson figured he’d give the dog a counterintuitive name—Deathray.

“This is the sweetest little thing, let’s call him Deathray,” he recalls thinking at the time.

Unfortunately, for Wilkinson, the rescue league received two applications for Jingle, the other of which was submitted by a family that specifically requested the Yorkshire breed.

But the shelter called Wilkinson back the next day and offered Tiny, who was set to be taken in by another prospective dog owner until the adoption fell through. “She’s definitely not pure-bred and not as attractive,” as a pure toy poodle. But she was equally friendly and just as diminutive. She also inherited the “Deathray” name, but with a twist.

“I figured I would call her ‘deathray_2000′”—all lower case, Wilkinson insists—”kind of like when you go to the dollar store and see those cheap Chinese knockoffs,” he says. “They have to do something to catch your attention.”

The catchy name has helped Wilkinson’s search get some play on Reddit.

Though Wilkinson’s flier says “Tiny,” the radio frequency identification tag embedded in the dog’s body reads “deathray_2000.” Wilkinson says he and others use both names freely. “Some of my family call her DR2K.”

Though deathray_2000’s tag isn’t trackable online, if someone finds the dog, which left Wilkinson’s house without wearing a collar, they can bring it to a shelter, veterinarian or larger pet stores and have her scanned, which will show Wilkinson as the owner.