Dogs names

We have acquired two dogs from the nice people at Southern California Golden Retriever Rescue. They never lived in a kennel or a pound - we picked them up from their previous owners, who were giving them up, for reasons not really established.
A number of mysteries came with the dogs - the owners tell us that they are nearly 2 years old (they'll be two in October), and that they are golden retrievers. The weird thing is that they don't look like two year old golden retrievers - they are much too small (about 45 pounds each - they should be closer to 60, and 80 wouldn't be vastly excessive, in my understanding). We suspect that either they are not golden retreivers (they have the shape of Irish setters, but they're too small for that) or they are not 2 years old - but why would you not tell the truth about that? (We were also told that they were housetrained, up to date on shots, and good at walking on a leash, and none of that was true).
The dogs are extraordinarily devoted to one another -we bought two dog beds, but that was a waste, because they sleep in the same bed.

The plan was that one dog would be Alex's, and one dog would be Dan's. At least nominally - we wouldn't rely on them to do things like feed them, or we'd find dead dogs after a small number of days. So we had to decide on names. The boys don't have a good track record of naming animals (ask Karen and Karensander) so we had to try to encourage them to choose sensible names.
Early choices included A, D, X, Nicky and Nicky-Giana, Nicky and Nicky-Rover, then Nicky and Nicky-Rover, then Nick and Rover. Alex called his dog Powerbomb for about a week, whilst Dan's was called Maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaax (20 a's, very important). When we said that that was too many a's, it became Maaax. They suggested Jeremy. I said that that wasn't a very good name. They said "It's your name Daddy, so it must be good". When we finally settled on Maxwell and Boulder I ran to the pet store and fixed their names in plastic, so the names could be attached to them and not change.


The dogs are a little nervous. Particularly of the cat. They are generally unconcerned about cats, but the cat is not unconcerned about them. It is a little wary of the dogs, but they are very, very scared of the cat. The cat usually sleeps on the stairs, to stop them coming upstairs. Even when the cat isn't about, they are too worried to come upstairs for longer than a few seconds (just long enough to grab something they are not allowed to have).