Trying Not to Mistake Coincidence for Fate

In the novel I'm working on right now, the main character has an encounter in which she finds a stray German Shephard and mistakes it for the dog she grew up with -- one that's been dead for a very long time. I thought long and hard about a good dog name - I'm terrible at naming animals - and decided, in the end, that I would call this dog Roxie. I still wasn't sure, but I just went with it because as a writer, one of my fatal flaws is that I spend way too much time thinking up names. I obsess over them (so thanks, Jon, for the random name browser).

The other day, I was walking Tanya down a street I try not to walk her down too often because there's a huge dog that barks and snarls and throws itself against the fence when it sees other dogs. It's a German Shephard. When I walked by the other day and the dog started its mean routine, I heard the owner yell, "Roxie!" He yelled it again several more times, so I know I wasn't hearing things.

The dog in my novel is nothing like this dog, the complete opposite sort of dog, in fact, but it was still like some sort of cosmic connection to hear that the only German Shephard in my neighborhood is also named Roxie. And confirmation that I really do pick great animal names.