
Fourteen Things a Chihuahua Gets Away With
A confessional inventory of the fourteen specific behaviors my chihuahua gets away with on a daily basis that would, from any larger dog, produce a household intervention.

“A confessional column written from the chihuahua's perspective, documenting the household's actual daily schedule as she understands it, with brief annotations from the human.”

A confessional inventory of the fourteen specific behaviors my chihuahua gets away with on a daily basis that would, from any larger dog, produce a household intervention.

A confessional column on the first work-day separation with a new chihuahua, the destruction that followed, and the structured plan I should have run before I left for the office.

A confessional column on the four-hundred dollars of training books and obedience classes that ultimately revealed it was the human, not the chihuahua, who needed the training all along.

A confessional column on the chihuahua grooming kit I assembled after five years of buying the wrong tools, the items that survived the audit, and the small drawer they live in now.

A field-tested list of activities I do with my chihuahua that look unhinged to neighbors and are, on the dog's account, the structural highlights of her week.

A confessional column on the year I treated my chihuahua's sock-stealing as a personality flaw, the trainer's diagnosis (it was me), and the small calm fix that followed.

A field report on the night the fire alarm went off at 2 a.m., the four minutes that revealed the household's unpreparedness, and the calm one-page plan that now lives by the door.

A confessional column on the eighteen months my chihuahua ran our household and the calmer routine that, eventually, replaced the small ad hoc dictatorship.

A field report on the morning a tick was discovered on a chihuahua, the twenty minutes of structured panic that followed, and the calm three-minute removal that should have happened first.

A field report on the household phenomenon by which a chihuahua selects, from among the available inventory, one specific toy and elevates it to a permanent role in the household.

An honest assembly of an evacuation go-bag for a chihuahua, started during a 3 a.m. insomnia spiral, refined since, and used (calmly) once.

An honest field report on the first long road trip with a chihuahua, what went wrong, and the small set of household and gear adjustments that, on the second trip, mostly worked.