Things My Chihuahua Loves That I Did Not Predict

I have lived with a six-pound chihuahua for nine years, and I am still discovering, on a roughly weekly basis, that there are things she loves that nobody told me about in advance. Some of them are small (a specific shopping bag, never a different shopping bag). Some of them are larger (the bathroom mat, which she has annexed). All of them are, on the available evidence, deeply important to her in a way that I am not credentialed to explain.

This is a partial inventory, in the order I have catalogued them, of the surprising things a chihuahua will love. The list is approximate. The dog has not been consulted.

The burrow, in any form

A chihuahua, given access to a folded blanket, a fitted hoodie left on a couch, the sleeve of a coat draped over a chair, a duvet edge, or any soft enclosed space whatsoever, will spend approximately seventeen minutes establishing a small dome inside it and then sleep for several hours in a position that, viewed from any angle, suggests she has fallen down a narrow well.

This is not a quirk. The burrowing instinct in the breed is well-documented and surprisingly old; it is generally attributed to descent from the Techichi, the small companion dogs of pre-Columbian Mexico, which evidently appreciated the same domestic real estate. My dog Doris is a purist about this. She has, on multiple occasions, attempted to burrow into a folded grocery receipt.

The warm laundry, freshly out of the dryer

There is a specific window, lasting approximately ninety seconds, in which a load of clean laundry is at exactly the right temperature for a chihuahua to install herself in the basket and remain there until either the laundry is folded around her or she is physically lifted out. Doris has perfected the timing. She arrives in the laundry room with a bearing that suggests she has cleared her schedule. The basket is, briefly, hers.

I want to note, in the interest of journalistic honesty, that I have abandoned at least three half-folded shirts because she had fallen asleep on them with a degree of conviction that I could not, in conscience, disturb.

The sun spot, with appalling accuracy

A chihuahua is, in my experience, one of the most accurate domestic instruments for locating the moving sun spot on a hardwood floor. Doris will track the spot through three rooms and two doorways across an afternoon, repositioning herself with a small adjustment every twenty minutes or so, the way a sundial might if a sundial were five and a half pounds and demanding.

I have read various breed-history references on this topic, and the most plausible explanation is the breed’s surface-area-to-volume ratio: a small dog loses heat faster than a large one, and the sun is the cheapest available radiator. The dog is doing physics. The dog has not, in fairness, ever told me this is what she is doing. I am extrapolating. The AKC has a brief, charitable summary of the same observation across breeds.

The pocket, of any garment

A chihuahua loves a pocket. Specifically, the chest pocket of a hoodie, the inside pocket of a coat, the kangaroo pocket of a sweatshirt, and (on one occasion that I will not elaborate on) the front pocket of a pair of pants that the wearer was actively wearing.

This is, I think, related to the burrow instinct, with a specific carry component. A chihuahua in a pocket has solved several problems at once: the soft enclosed space, the heat of the body next to her, and the certainty that the human in question is not going anywhere without her, because the human is wearing her.

There are gentler ways to bond with a small dog, I am told. The pocket is not gentler. The pocket is more efficient.

The routine itself, more than the contents

I will plant a sincere paragraph here, because it is true and the rest of the column has been silly. The most surprising thing my dog loves, after nine years, is the routine. The morning walk at 7:14 a.m. (give or take), the breakfast in the same bowl in the same corner, the work-from-home posture I adopt at 9 a.m. with her under the desk on a folded fleece, the lunchtime walk in the same loop, the same evening sequence of dinner and a small chew and a settle on the couch. She is not bored. She is, by every observable measure, deeply at home in the cadence.

Dogs are, the behavior literature is consistent on this, animals of cadence. Predictability lowers the baseline stress response in small breeds in particular. What looks to me like a charmingly fussy preference for the 7:14 walk is, in the dog’s nervous system, the structural fact of the day.

The shopping bag, but only that one

There is a specific shopping bag in our house, a thin paper one with the name of a bookstore on it, that Doris loves. The other bags are, as far as she is concerned, beneath consideration. I do not know why this bag. I have been unable to identify a distinguishing feature beyond a slight crinkle that may or may not be louder than the crinkles of comparable bags. The bag has been in the house for eleven months. She lies on it.

I have, in writing this column, attempted to count how many objects in our house Doris has formed unexpected attachments to. The number is, conservatively, fourteen. (The other thirteen are not in this column for length reasons; the editor has been very patient.)

One last item, and a recommendation

The final surprising thing my chihuahua loves is the moment, at 9:45 p.m. on most nights, when I close my laptop. She does not love this because she likes me. She loves this because the laptop closing is the structural cue for the bedtime sequence: the quick patrol of the kitchen for crumbs, the climb to the small bed at the foot of the larger bed, the settle, and the long sleep.

She is signaling that the routine has worked. A few of the games we play together earlier in the evening are, by 9:45, a memory she does not appear to be examining; she is on to the next item on the schedule, which is sleep.

If you have a chihuahua, watch for a week and write down, casually, the small things she sits through, lobbies for, or hides in. The list will not match mine. It will be, in its small particularity, the document of a dog you live with, which is, in the end, the only document worth keeping.