FRAGILE...MY FOOT!!!! (Chihuahua)

Member Name: Trixi

Product:	Chihuahua
Date:	01/03/04 (704 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: No walks in the rain, suitable for a small flat house, No need for dog food

Disadvantages: Can't be taken seriously if you go on a long walk

We got our chihuahua when I was 8 years old... My gran had just died and since my sister and I were nagging my parents for a dog...they thought that it would be good to get a dog... We were thinking a lab or collie... little did we know.

My mum was a nurse and at that time she split her work between accident and emergency and Out patient day clinics... On one of her clinics she had a woman who bred dogs... chihuahuas. One day the clinic was running late and my mum was trying to kill time, being the end of the day and so she asked the woman about her dogs...

Then came the sob story... She told my mum that she had just had a dog returned to her because the family were emmigrating and they didn't fancy putting their dear dog through customs etc....being so small it might be too stressful an experience... The problem was that the breeder now had a new litter and poor poppy did not fit, she was not one of them and she was being bullied...stealing food from the bowl, rather than eating with the rest....

Having heard that story mum thought she had to help. At that time KC Registered chihuahuas were about £100 but now I thing they are about £500.

So to our instructions from the breeder....

Poppy was a fragile dog she had to be lifted onto an off the sofa...she would break her wee legs (This lasted for about 2 weeks until someone rattled the letter box and wee fragile poppy leapt off the sofa and yapped viciously at my aunt who hated dogs.

Chihuahuas are thought to be the smallest dog breed in the world and can come in a vast assortment of colours, black, fawn, golden etc There are two varieties of Chihuahuas - long haired and short haired. I would reccommend long haired (short haired look like skin heads the hair is so short. I think the short haired look like bald rats!!!) At that time Poppy was the 2nd smallest dog in Scotland (her brother was the smallest at that time) She came in at a massive 21 cm length by 1
2cm in height (if memory serves me right) Chihuahuas can fit in a large coat pocket and weigh no more than 6Ib. So most cats are bigger than chihuahuas.

Chihuahuas are however extremely brave animals..
It doesn't care that most things tower over it... they have balls!!!
To give you an example of this....we never really kept the dog on the cat lead we had (The cat lead was too big and Poppy always escaped from it) so one summers day we were in the garden and our dog came head to head (well head to leg really) with next doors boxer. The boxer was quite confused... I mean what was this animal... it was too small for a cat...so what is it? Moving in for a closer look at this rat bearing its teeth... when nice as you like Poppy jumped up and nipped the Boxers nose. The boxer dog didn't know how to react, but decided not to bother. We had visions of a slaughter but in the end it was us that had to pick up our dog because her ego had grown and she wanted to follow the boxer!!!

Chihuahuas don't eat dog food.. Even the specially formulated stuff is a bit rich... Poppy ate alot of what we ate.... a bit of plain mince, chicken, beefburger ( Although if you want to enter your tike into dog shows I would be more careful with the diet than we were. (Poppy loved to nick half a slice of cheese on toast & a slurp of coffee)

In some ways chihuahuas are low maintenance...no extra on dog food, no long walks (round the block was a huge walk for poppy...most of the time she just went into the garden... but in other ways they are... Being a small dog they can have longer lives than most. Poppy died at 17. Her grandparents were 21 when they died. Also small dogs can be prone to fits. Poppy suffered from fits.... She was not on medication, but we all had to learn how we could help her.

Despite the fact that Poppy was not the kind of dog we were expecting.... I wouldn't have changed her for the world. Chihuahuas may have a yapp
y bark, but they are wee stars!!!

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