A chihuahua puppy weighs roughly a pound and a half and arrives at your home convinced it weighs ninety. This is the central fact of chihuahua puppyhood, and everything else follows from it. What you are holding is not a small dog. It is a regular dog that has been through some sort of shrinking incident and is deeply annoyed about it.
My chihuahua, Nacho, came home at nine weeks, at which point his entire training program consisted of me saying his name and him staring at a wall. I want to set expectations honestly here, because the internet will tell you a chihuahua puppy can be fully trained over a brisk weekend, and the internet, on this matter, is hallucinating. What actually happens is a timeline. It unfolds over months, in roughly the stages below. I have lived every one of them. I have the chewed phone charger to prove it.
Weeks 8 to 10: the arrival, or, a pound and a half of weather
Most chihuahua puppies come home between eight and twelve weeks, and the first jobs are smaller than you would think. You are not teaching calculus. You are teaching the puppy its name, that hands are good, and that the crate is a bedroom rather than a dungeon.
Do the handling now, while the puppy is too disoriented to file a complaint. Touch the paws. Touch the ears. Peek at the teeth. Every one of these becomes a shrieking ordeal later if you skip it now, a lesson I learned the expensive way and wrote up in full in how to trim a chihuahua's nails without the stress. Potty training also begins here, and I use the word "begins" the way one begins a marathon. A puppy this young has almost no bladder and needs to go out roughly every time it does anything: after waking, after eating, after playing, and after thinking hard about playing. Set a timer. Trust nothing.
Weeks 10 to 16: the part that actually matters
If you skim one section, do not let it be this one. The stretch from about three weeks to three months of age is the socialization window, which the American Veterinary Society of Animal Behavior calls the single most important period in a dog's behavioral life. Whatever your puppy meets now, calmly and pleasantly, it files under "normal." Whatever it does not meet, it may later decide to bark at with its entire body.
So stack up gentle experiences. Different floors, odd noises, umbrellas, hats, the vacuum from a respectful distance, calm vaccinated dogs, and friendly humans of assorted shapes and sizes. The AVSAB is clear that this should begin before the vaccine series is finished, because behavior problems, not infections, are the leading cause of death in young dogs. That is a heavy sentence, and it is exactly why the window matters.
One rule I cannot repeat enough, and here I will turn briefly serious: put the puppy down. Chihuahuas are so portable that people carry them everywhere, and a dog carried past every scary thing never learns that the scary thing is fine. Let it walk on its own four feet, on a harness rather than a collar. The most confident chihuahua on my block knows two commands. The most neurotic one knows nine. Socialization beat obedience, and it was not close. The wider first-owner briefing is in what owners wish they knew before getting a chihuahua. First cues can start now too, since a puppy can learn its name and a "sit" from about eight weeks. Keep it light and short.
Months 4 to 6: teeth, and the first rebellion
Around four months the baby teeth begin falling out, with the adult set in by roughly six or seven months, and during this window your puppy will attempt to eat your home. This is teething. It is normal. The only real defense is a generous supply of chew toys and the grim acceptance that one shoe is going to be lost. Pick the shoe in advance if it helps you sleep.
Leash training gets serious in here, and puberty shows up around six months, bringing with it the faint but unmistakable sense that your puppy has begun to have Ideas. Hold that thought.
Months 6 to 12: adolescence, or, who are you and what have you done with my dog
Here it is. The phase nobody warns you about, the one chihuahua owners have taken to calling the "chi-nager." Somewhere between six and twelve months, your beautifully trained puppy appears to forget everything it ever knew. The recall you drilled for months evaporates. The "sit" earns you a long, insolent stare. The barking comes back. You will be convinced you broke your dog.
You did not. There is real science under this. A 2020 study in the journal Biology Letters, led by researcher Lucy Asher, tracked dogs through adolescence and found their trainability genuinely dipped right around eight months, and, cruelly, that the dip was aimed specifically at their own primary caregiver. That is correct: the science says your teenage dog tunes you out in particular, as a developmental stage. I am not making this up. The reassuring half is that it is temporary. Keep reinforcing the rules through the eye-rolling, resist the powerful urge to quit, and the dog you trained comes back. This is also, not coincidentally, the age when a lot of chihuahuas land in rescue, surrendered by people who mistook the teenager for the finished product. It is not the finished product. Wait it out.
One year and up: the dog returns
Most chihuahuas finish growing by nine or ten months and count as adults at a year, and somewhere in there the agreeable dog resurfaces with a fully installed adult brain. The work you did in the window and held through adolescence is suddenly, quietly, just there. It was worth it. Nacho now comes when called roughly ninety percent of the time, which for a chihuahua is essentially a doctorate.
So, what command took the longest?
I asked around, and among chihuahua owners the answer is close to unanimous: recall. Teaching the dog to come when called, reliably, outdoors, is the everest of the whole enterprise. The reason is simple economics. Out in the world there are squirrels, smells, and other dogs, and you are standing there offering what, exactly? A piece of kibble and your personality? You have been outbid.
Two mistakes make it worse, and I made both. The first is calling the dog only for things it dislikes, the bath, the nail trim, the end of the fun, until the word "come" reliably predicts disappointment. The second is chasing the dog when it does not come, which a chihuahua correctly interprets as the single greatest game ever invented. The fix is to become, briefly, the most interesting thing in the yard: crouch down, go high and squeaky, and pay recall like it is the jackpot, every time, especially early on. For a four-pound dog anywhere near a road, this is the one command worth obsessing over.
The training tip that changed everything
If I could mail one paragraph back to myself at week nine, it would be this. The single biggest upgrade was shrinking the treats. A chihuahua has a mouth roughly the size of a thimble, and a large biscuit takes forever to chew, which detonates the dog's focus mid-lesson. Switch to pea-sized, soft, high-value scraps the dog can swallow in one gulp and the whole session tightens up. A related and genuinely important note: because chihuahuas are prone to hypoglycemia and need small, frequent meals regardless, tiny training treats are not only more effective, they suit the breed's daily feeding needs better than big ones.
The runners-up, all owner-endorsed and all real: keep sessions to a few minutes and run several a day instead of one long slog; use a marker, a clicker or a crisp "Yes," to tell the dog the exact instant it got something right; say the cue once and then wait, because chanting "sit, sit, sit, SIT" teaches the dog the word is optional; and train right before dinner, when your food-motivated chihuahua is at its most employable. Underneath all of it sits the real mindset shift: treat the chihuahua like an actual dog, not a handbag accessory. That permissiveness is where so-called small-dog syndrome comes from, the barking and snapping and cue-ignoring that gets pinned on the breed. It is usually just a tiny dog nobody ever asked to have manners. On which subject, the barking gets its own full guide in chihuahua barking: causes and training solutions.
Frequently asked questions
How long does it really take to potty train a chihuahua?
Longer than you would like. The American Kennel Club's rule of thumb is that a puppy can hold it for about its age in months plus one, measured in hours, and that many dogs are reasonably reliable by around six months. Chihuahuas skew slower, thanks to tiny bladders and a firm dislike of cold or wet grass, and some are not fully dependable until closer to a year. Frequent trips and consistency beat any calendar promise.
Why does my chihuahua pee inside right after coming in from outside?
Usually because the outdoor trip was social hour rather than business. Small puppies get distracted, forget the mission, and remember it the second they are back on your warm, absorbent rug. Stay out a few extra minutes, reward the instant the dog goes outside, and in cold or rain accept that a reluctant chihuahua may need a covered spot and a little more patience.
Why did my trained puppy suddenly stop listening at six to eight months?
Welcome to adolescence. Research on dog development shows trainability really does dip in the teenage months, aimed especially at the primary caregiver, before recovering. Your dog is neither broken nor spiteful. Keep the rules consistent, keep rewarding the behavior you want, and the listening returns as the brain finishes maturing.
When can my puppy meet other dogs, given the vaccine question?
The socialization window closes fast, so veterinary behaviorists advise starting careful, positive socialization before the vaccine series is complete, favoring healthy, vaccinated dogs and clean, low-risk settings over the dog park. Ask your veterinarian how to balance it for your particular puppy, but do not simply wait until sixteen weeks, because by then the most valuable window is already closing.
The timeline has no finish line
Here is the thing nobody tells you at week nine, when you are holding a pound and a half of trembling opinion and quietly wondering what you have done. The training never entirely ends, because the dog never entirely stops being a chihuahua. But the frantic part does. One day you look up and the puppy has become a small, portable, weirdly competent adult who comes when called, more or less, and believes you personally hung the moon. You did most of the work. The dog took most of the credit. This, I have come to understand, is the whole arrangement.
