On Realizing My Chihuahua Was Running the House

I want to admit something at the top, before I judge anyone else: for the first eighteen months I lived with my chihuahua Gizmo, he ran the household. I do not mean this in the cute way owners joke about. I mean it in the procedural way, in which Gizmo had decided when meals occurred, where the household members slept, who was allowed on which furniture, and what the response would be if any of these arrangements were challenged. By month fourteen, I had reorganized the spare bedroom around his nap rotation. By month sixteen, my long-term partner had moved into the spare bedroom, ostensibly because of the nap rotation but, I now suspect, also because of related issues.

This is, on retrospective examination, not normal. I am writing this column with the full benefit of having been the household I am about to describe, and with the additional benefit of having, at month nineteen, finally figured out what was going on and reorganized the situation.

How it starts, mostly without anyone noticing

The early stage is invisible. Gizmo was three pounds when I brought him home. The accommodations seemed small. The first one I remember was, in week two, allowing him on the couch. This seemed harmless. The second was, in week four, agreeing not to vacuum on Saturday mornings because the noise distressed him. This also seemed harmless. The third was, in week six, switching the household's dinner time from 6:30 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. so that his pre-dinner whining would not coincide with the news.

By month four, I had stopped noticing that any of these decisions had been made. They had become, in my own mental map of the household, the way the household ran. It did not, in my reasoning at the time, occur to me that the household had run differently before Gizmo arrived. He was, by month four, the structural baseline.

The acceleration phase

Month four to month twelve was the accumulation. Gizmo, on the available evidence, was not consciously orchestrating any of this. He was a dog, doing dog things, expressing his preferences in the way a small intelligent companion animal expresses preferences. The household's response to those preferences was, in retrospect, the variable that mattered. Each preference was, individually, a small accommodation. The accumulated set, by month twelve, was a household-level reorganization.

By month twelve, the house had, by my count: three small fleece beds in three rooms (all "temporary"); a no-vacuuming Saturday rule; a specific dinner time; a specific bedtime; a specific Friday evening movie that we did not watch because the music distressed him; two no-go furniture items (the loveseat in the living room and the chair in the kitchen, both apparently reserved for him); and one no-go room (the spare bedroom, which had become, on a process I did not fully understand, his daytime nap suite).

I want to be clear that none of this was, individually, unreasonable. The accumulated pattern was, however, structurally absurd, and I had, by month twelve, lost the ability to see that.

The realization, in month nineteen

The realization came during a phone call with a friend who had visited for a long weekend in month nineteen and had, at the end of the weekend, asked me a few small specific questions. The questions were friendly. They were also, on examination, devastating.

The questions, in order: "Do you remember when you used to have the loveseat in the living room?" Yes; it is still there. "When did you last sit on it?" Pause. Not for some months, possibly. "Do you remember why?"

I did not, on a brief examination, remember why. It came back to me about thirty minutes later, after I had hung up the phone and looked at the loveseat for a while. The loveseat had become, in month seven, Gizmo's afternoon spot, and the household had, in a process that I now think of as a small ad hoc treaty negotiation between the dog and the human, agreed not to displace him from it. The agreement had then expanded, over months, to "the loveseat is Gizmo's furniture," and the household had stopped using it.

There were, on examination, eight other arrangements like this. A separate piece on the five stages covers the broader phenomenon; this column is the household-specific version.

The reorganization, briefly

I want to be honest about how unglamorous the fix was. I did not, in any dramatic way, retake the household. I worked with a force-free trainer over about eight weeks to gradually re-establish baseline routines. The components, in summary:

• Designated dog spaces. One bed in the living room, one bed in the bedroom. Other furniture became human furniture, with calm consistent reinforcement of the new pattern. The general training approach covers the mechanics; the AVSAB position on humane training covers the broader reasoning.
• Structured exercise and rest. Two short walks per day, training sessions, structured nap times. A more tired, mentally satisfied dog negotiates fewer treaties.
• The vacuuming rule revisited. Saturday morning vacuuming returned, with Gizmo in his crate with a chew toy during the noise. He adapted within three weekends.
• The dinner time question. Moved back to 6:30 p.m. He whined for two weeks. Then he stopped.

By the end of week eight, the household had, on most measures, returned to a configuration in which the human members made the household decisions. The dog was not, on his body language, distressed by this. He was, on the available evidence, somewhat relieved.

The sincere paragraph, planted on schedule

I will plant the sincere paragraph here, because the column requires one and because Gizmo has earned it. The thing about the eighteen-month dictator phase, on later reflection, was that Gizmo had not, in any sense, been trying to take over the household. He had been a small intelligent dog expressing his preferences in the way small intelligent dogs do, and the household had, on its own initiative, reorganized around those preferences without anyone making a conscious decision to. The fix was not, in any sense, a return to dominance. The fix was a return to structure, in which the household made decisions and the dog operated within them, and the dog turned out to prefer the structure to the previous ad hoc arrangement. The dog had, in retrospect, been waiting for someone to be in charge.

The end of the column, briefly

If you are reading this and recognize any part of the eighteen-month phase I have described, the reorganization is straightforward and the dog will, in most cases, be relieved rather than distressed. The household will be relieved too. The loveseat, in our household, is now a regular piece of human furniture again. Gizmo, on the available evidence, has accepted the new arrangement. He is currently asleep on his designated bed in the corner of the living room, where he has been most evenings since week six of the reorganization. The system, on the available evidence, runs.