Funny Chihuahua Behavior, From the Field

I have been keeping a small notebook for several years now, on the kitchen counter, in which I write down the specific small absurd things my chihuahua Doris does on otherwise unremarkable Tuesdays. The notebook is, by my last count, on its fourth volume. I am not going to publish the whole thing. I am, however, going to share a representative sample, in case any other chihuahua owner has been wondering whether their dog is, statistically, on-pattern.

I am happy to report that, on the available evidence, your dog is.

The laundry-basket protocol

There exists, in our laundry room, a wicker basket that previously held the warm clean laundry. Past tense. The basket is, as of approximately fourteen months ago, Doris's basket. The transition was not announced; it was effected. The clean laundry now lives on the dryer, where it stays for slightly longer than a sensible household would permit, because the basket is not currently available.

I have, on three separate occasions, attempted to repatriate the basket. Each attempt has been met with a small ceremony of repossession, in which Doris removes whatever I have placed inside (a folded shirt, a stack of dishtowels, a pair of socks I had matched and was proud of), and resettles in the basket with the calm bearing of a small dog who has restored civic order.

I am not, as of this writing, planning a fourth attempt.

The sudden suspicion of the toaster

For seven years and approximately eleven months, our kitchen toaster was, in Doris's view, an unremarkable household appliance. In month one of the eighth year, on a Tuesday, the toaster apparently committed a small unforgivable act, the nature of which I have not been able to determine.

Doris now, on every entry into the kitchen, performs a brief security inspection of the toaster from a polite distance of approximately two feet. The inspection takes nine seconds. She then proceeds to her water bowl. The toaster has not, on the available evidence, behaved differently. It is, I think, on probation.

I have asked a veterinarian friend whether this kind of sudden onset suspicion of a household object is concerning. She said, "Probably not, but write it in the notebook." I have written it in the notebook.

The couch circle, performed at length

Before lying down on the couch, Doris performs a circular pre-settle ritual that takes between four and seventeen rotations to complete. The variation is, I have determined, not random. Four rotations is a quick settle; ten is a thorough one; seventeen has only been observed twice in nine years and, on both occasions, was followed by an unusually deep three-hour nap.

I am told, by people who have read more behavior literature than I have, that the circle is an ancestral nesting behavior inherited from the dog's wild ancestors flattening grass before lying down. Doris's couch is, of course, not grass. The grass-flattening genome has not, however, received this update.

The 3 a.m. stare

There is a phenomenon, well-documented in the chihuahua-owner community, in which the small dog wakes the household at 3 a.m. by sitting two inches from the human's face and staring without apparent purpose. The stare is silent. The stare is patient. The stare resolves, in our household, only when I open my eyes, at which point Doris, satisfied, returns to her own bed.

I have, after extensive investigation, concluded that the stare has no specific cause. It is not a need to go out. It is not hunger. It is not distress. It is, as far as I can determine, a brief structural check-in. The dog is making sure the household is, on the 3 a.m. metric, still operational. I am, evidently, the metric.

The sincere paragraph, planted on schedule

I will plant the sincere paragraph here. The thing about living with a small attentive animal for nine years is that the small absurd behaviors accumulate into a kind of household-specific dialect. Nobody outside the household understands what "the basket protocol" or "the toaster suspicion" mean. The bond between a small dog and a household is, in part, a private vocabulary built out of small repeated absurdities.

I have been writing this column long enough to know that other chihuahua households have their own dialects. Reader emails, over the years, have contributed a remarkable taxonomy: the specific shoe that is loved, the specific neighbor who is barked at, the specific hour of the day at which the dog must be on a particular cushion. The list is, on the available evidence, infinite.

Why dogs collect specific weird preferences (the actual answer)

There is, I am told by people who study animal behavior, a real reason this happens. Dogs are, as the Companion Animal Psychology archive covers in some detail, associative learners; they form connections between specific objects, locations, and outcomes faster than between general categories. A specific basket, then, is not a basket-shaped object to the dog; it is the basket, a particular item with a particular feel and smell that has, over time, become associated with comfort. Other baskets are not, by the dog's reckoning, the same item.

This is also why one specific shopping bag (in our house) and not the others, one specific corner of the kitchen (in yours) and not its neighbor, one specific blanket and not the otherwise-identical second one in the closet, accumulate the dog's loyalty. The dog is not arbitrary; the dog is operating on a finer-grained item identity than the human is. We see "blanket"; the dog sees this blanket.

The bottom line, briefly

If you have a chihuahua and have noticed, over the years, that she has developed a small set of weirdly specific household preferences, the column you are reading is the answer to whether this is normal. The answer is yes. A separate inventory I keep on this beat covers the surprising preferences; this column is the procedural section.

Your notebook, if you start one, will look different from mine. The contents are private; the practice is universal. Doris, as I write this, is in the basket. The toaster is on probation. The sun spot has moved off the dining-room rug, on schedule, at 4:32 p.m. The system is, as ever, running.