A Tale of Two Kittens and One Puppy

I am quite short; just a tad over five feet. I can remember my Dad always telling me that good things come in little packages.

When I started looking at dogs, I knew that I wanted a small dog for several reasons:

Small dogs generally live longer than large dogs
Small dogs wouldn’t be a big threat to the boys
Small dogs eat less
More apartments accept small dogs than large dogs

We never expected to own a dog that needs clothes. I’ve never quite understood the need to deck out dogs in bows and bandanas. I anthropomorphize with the best of them, but I also believe in letting dogs be dogs, to a certain extent, anyway.

But Chester shivers when it gets cold (of course, he shivers when he’s excited, too)! So we have a couple of coats for him now. He doesn’t much like them being put on, and he really doesn’t like the sound of the velcro when we take them off, but he’s fine with them once they’re on. At some point, if I ever have spare time again, I will attempt a sweater for him.

What I didn’t anticipate were some of the other benefits of small dogs:

Small dogs are manageable. They’re easy to carry around, although of course you shouldn’t carry them everywhere. Even when they pull on the leash, they’re not about to pull your arm off.
Small dogs curl up in your lap like a cat.

There are the downsides, of course:

Small dogs are more difficult to housetrain. They’re so small they can easily go somewhere without you noticing it. Plus their bladders are much smaller, so they can’t hold it as long as a larger dog. That doesn’t mean they can’t be trained to go outside. Chester is coming along well with this.
Small dogs get underfoot. Chester has been stepped on by me several times already. I’m used to cats, so I’m used to small animals, but he still just gets underfoot sometimes. He’s also been dropped on his head once already.

We didn’t expect to end up with a dog as small as Chester. We didn’t expect to end up with a dog who needed clothes. We certainly never expected to end up with a Chihuahua. Now we’re glad we did.

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