First, some notes about the Tiny Dog. The Tiny Dog is a shelter dog, meaning that he comes with his fair-share of baggage. I’ve never owned a dog before. Wife tricked me into this venture because a) I was out of town b) it was her birthday and c) his face looks like this:
She assured me (and the shelter assured her) that Tiny Dog was the most mellow, sweetest, laid back of all dogs. He’s great with kids! He’s super friendly! He’s great with small animals and other dogs! And totally house broken! You can probably tell by the sarcastic exclamation points and the title of this post that Tiny Dog is none of these things.
The first thing Tiny Dog did when we brought him home was attempt to reclaim my childhood stuffed animal as his sex toy. He is, however, very, very, very cute. And, let’s be real, we’re not the most disciplined owners (despite the fact that I have an advanced degree in behaviorism…), so his behavior is almost definitely 80% our fault.
Tiny Dog kind of looks like a fancy small wolf or coyote, so we were convinced that he was chihuahua (which we knew) mixed with other fancy breeds. So we bought one of those extremely expensive dog DNA kits for insane dog owners who want to attempt to stick multiple swabs in their dogs’ mouths. Tiny Dog is not exotic. It turns out that Tiny Dog is exactly 2 breeds: Chihuahua and Pomeranian. In fact, his DNA results would suggest that he’s somewhat of a fancy designer dog. Which further led us to question our assumptions about Tiny Dog being a meek little stray street puppy who had to fend for himself before being saved by the humane society. Now armed with more information about Tiny Dog’s intelligence and survival instincts (or lack there of), we are forced confront the probable reality that he was the intellectual runt of his designer dog litter who probably just wandered off until the shelter found him 20 minutes later.
But we really, really love Tiny Dog. Nonetheless it became quickly apparent that his neuroses and personality (100% Chihuahua) were no match for us. The first summer we had him he was constantly hysterical about storms and would hide behind the toilet if he heard so much as a truck driving by:
After 3 days of incessant shivering, whining, hiding, and lack of sleep for everyone, I took him to the vet who informed us that he had a urinary tract infection, which was probably making the anxiety worse. She treated the UTI, gave us a bottle of the world’s tiniest valium for storms, and gently suggested that we might wish to consider prozac.
Wife was really opposed to this. In spite of the fact that we both benefit from modern medicine to maintain our own sanity, she was worried about the health ramifications and the overall weirdness of putting a chihuahua on prozac. So we did work on training mostly diligently for a while. We took Tiny Dog to an obedience class where he excelled, unless it was storming. He seemed to like us more and have less separation anxiety. His wonderful trait of spontaneously growling/snapping at people whenever he was so much as breathed on while sleeping seemed to be diminishing.
But then Christmas came and Tiny Dog was extremely distressed by all the noise, action, and changes in routine. He kept threatening to bite people and terrified my mom’s 70 pound flat coat retriever. We tried to fly home with him on a plane which was a fiasco resulting in the entire plane hating us, me refusing to sit next to Wife and Tiny Dog, and the flight attendant noting, “wow, he’s really hyperventilating, huh?” Not to mention, he growled at a baby. A baby. (As a side note, Wife also bought me a Furbo for Christmas, which is a fancy schmantzy dog-cam that allows your to watch your dog when you’re not home. You can also talk to them and feed them treats from the machine. This terrified the Tiny Dog, and he wouldn’t come in the living room for 3 days.)
At this point Wife started to become paranoid and frantic that we would have to give him away if he bit someone (he never has), so we pulled out the big guns. We made an appointment (later this month) to work one-on-one with a professional dog behaviorist (embarrassing: see previous notes about my profession) and I bundled Tiny Dog off to the vet again. Within 30 seconds of walking in the door Tiny Dog pooped on the floor and growled at a dog 12 times his size. They put the world’s tiniest muzzle on him, but he made a valiant attempt to bite the vet anyway. The vet tech seemed to find this endearing, as she had previously made friends with Tiny Dog while he was under sedation for a dental exam, and also she has 5 chihuahuas of her own. I was vaguely mortified. Following the exam, Tiny Dog jumped down, hid under my chair shivering with his tail between his legs, and promptly peed on the floor.
They gave us the prescription.
Stay tuned…
Some Supervision Required. 