Ok. I’ll be nice to people and put the Schizo & Chihuahueño trauma-bonding-projection-comfort-love rant under a cut.

Maybe one of the reasons I like Chihuahuas is because of their misunderstood personified nature along with how often they’re abandoned, euthanized(only dog breed euthanized more is the American Pit Bull Terrier), and mocked reminds me of growing up being paranoid and how people think that they understand it once they read or are told about it yet usually fail to recognize and react mercifully to paranoia when it happens.

Chihuahuas are used as symbolism for anxiety once personified; their homeostasis requires a lot of trembling that we associate with fear, they’re tiny predators from a vast territory that’s dangerous to their proneness for dehydration and that’s always been full of stronger predators, they have to be more vigilant and better at hiding, they’re always on guard and guarding their supplies.

Chihuahua traits are then further misunderstood from a mixture of willful ignorance and genuine human inability to comprehend what they’re seeing. They’re treated without their needs met(can’t say most of them are “raised”)and often punished or forcefully have their boundaries removed consistently when they shouldn’t be, leading to them being “bad dogs”. Because they’re going to stress out and become unstable if they don’t feel safe and secure.

Because the smallest breed accepted into the kennel club association is scared from seeing the world as that large and powerful then hardly has it’s emotional needs met from owners refusing to try to get onto their level, viewing it as a behavioral problem when a pet Chi has strict boundaries or guarding, the bigger issue personification and devaluation of their species happens:

Chihuahuas have bodies shorter than 1ft that can easily sneak and hide where we can’t reach or see, legs that are perfect for them to outmaneuver or charge, and they have canines. While they’re more sensitive to fight/flight-mode so the reason may have different context overall,….a Chihuahua will use those canines just like any other dog, except they jump immediately to kill intent because they aren’t blessed to have the safety of anything lesser dished out.

It’s scary when it’s a Chihuahua because their sense of perceived threat is so large that their charges are desperate. That Chihuahua darted from under the chair his owner was in while snarling at you and snapping his teeth at whatever comes in contact with him like a mad dog because you stepped near his owner and his territory, and he isn’t sure if you’re going to hurt them.

Unlike a larger dog, a Chihuahua is both a predator and a prey animal, a Chi can’t take the chances of letting someone it doesn’t know for fact is safe closer to him or his loved one because to a Chihuahua, being touched by someone they haven’t decided to be loyal to is the same as letting themselves be killed. & unfortunately, people have been proving this irrational fear of theirs kinda true to them by reacting without sympathy or with focus only on their own hurt or disappointment as the human in charge. ♻️ A cycle worsens!

So Chihuahuas are abandoned, killed, then mocked and hated widespread using the very misunderstanding that hurts them and whoever they attack to justify that mistreatment.

Are Chihuahuas bad dogs or little dogs that are born into a big world that doesn’t understand or show patience and grace about it being much more dangerous for them to exist than the larger predators; including their families of humans, cats, and other dogs?

Did my Chihuahua know from senses and instincts that she was the same species as my Border Collie? Did she view herself as a weak and small, scolded failure that should have been like my Border Collie? Do human beliefs and mockeries ever reach them and affect them? Do the Chihuahuas and other “sassy” little dogs that hang around my work know that the 100+lbs dogs everyone fawns over, frolicking with no worries in the world, that keep naively trying to play with them by getting in their face by force are the same species?

Do people remember that they’re the same species and take that into account, how variable one species of mammal can be?

I almost hope to God and all that’s good in the world that people are somehow, despite contradictory evidence and testimony, correct when they hate on Chihuahuas.

I don’t want to think that the dog who grew up with me could have felt confused or wrong by the literal fact that she wasn’t my Border Collie and couldn’t do anything to assert her boundaries in a house with a Collie, multiple cats, and 4 humans.

I hope Chi’s lack the ability to feel alienation, self awareness of their size, comparison to others, injustice, senses to notice the hormones and weird familiarity of other dogs, and love— I really hope it’s true for their sake that they don’t feel that. They’re just bad dogs. It would be a less ugly story if that were true. People wouldn’t have to be uncomfortable with their actions or take responsibility for how they raise and care for vulnerable creatures if that were true.

But I know it’s not fully true, and I know my first 2 dogs were especially important to me and meant a lot to me for comfort because I noticed parallels with how people kept making “jokes” about them while claiming to love them, and how they treated a sick child who had never felt human enough like others, always dehumanized, but still always expected to act like a normal and “good” child, like good kids, normal, like your good sister, like your sister who wasn’t psychologically built all weird and fucked up like you:). psychologically different when it suits them, violent and cruel and unpredictably dangerous as a choice when it suits them, an annoying and pathetic joke with no worth when it suites them, full of potential and fun quirks when it suits them, but why in the world does it become more unpredictable with time treated as a weird, outcasted, “kinda”-animal? Maybe because you’re not treating Chihuahuas with the same basic respect for other dogs. Maybe because you never treated me with the same basic respect as other kids?

I always felt comfort of knowing that, even though Tito and Coco were dogs and didn’t understand the reasoning and senses of humans, even if they didn’t understand that their world was different yet based on the same expectations and needs as large dogs, they were still experiencing a similar mistreatment born out of ignorance and refusal to let go of ignorance and denial in favor of human pride, avoidance of responsibility, convenience/laziness, or fear of admitting to past mistakes/regrets. Or maybe you’re an asshole.