Tiny Chihuahua Loves Pet Chicken

I would like to begin with a fact, and the fact is this: somewhere in this country, a Chihuahua has looked at the entire animal kingdom, weighed every available option, and chosen, as his best friend in the world, a chicken.

Not another small dog. Not a cat, who would at least share the Chihuahua's general worldview, which is that the universe is suspicious and probably out to get us. A chicken. A bird that lays eggs and walks like it is perpetually surprised by its own feet. This is the friend the Chihuahua selected (with no notes, no second interview), and by all accounts he could not be happier about it.

I have spent roughly four decades observing dogs, and I can tell you that this should not work. A Chihuahua is a dog that weighs approximately as much as a sandwich and is convinced he weighs as much as a refrigerator. A chicken is a chicken. These two animals have, biologically speaking, nothing in common except a deep mutual interest in standing in the exact spot where a human is trying to walk.

The Size Situation

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Let us address the obvious. A grown chicken is, in many cases, LARGER than a Chihuahua. This does not appear to bother the Chihuahua even slightly. He has decided he is the one in charge. The chicken, who could in theory end this friendship at any moment with a single decisive peck, has apparently agreed to this arrangement, the way you agree to let a toddler win at checkers.

I find this enormously moving. Here is a six-pound dog who has appointed himself the supervisor of a bird that outweighs him, and the bird has simply said, fine, you're the boss, and the two of them have gone on to live what is, by every measure I can find, a deeply contented life. There is a lesson in there about confidence. I have not learned it. I once apologized to a parking meter (the parking meter did not apologize back).

What They Actually Do Together

The reports suggest the two of them mainly hang around. They explore the yard. They cuddle, which is a sentence I did not expect to write about a dog and a chicken, and yet here we are. The Chihuahua, I am told, prefers the company of the chickens to the company of the other dogs. He looked at his own species and said, no thank you, I'll be over here with the poultry.

I understand this impulse more than I would like to admit. I, too, have stood at a party full of people I am supposed to enjoy and quietly relocated to the kitchen to talk to the host's dog. The Chihuahua has simply taken this instinct to its logical extreme and joined a flock.

And he does not just tolerate the chickens. He LEADS them. He has, by some accounts, become a kind of authority figure among the birds, a tiny field marshal in a body the size of a dinner roll. I am not making this up. The chickens, for reasons known only to the chickens, seem fine with this. Somewhere there is a hen who reports to a dog, and that dog reports to a person who is trying to keep a straight face.

Why This Makes Sense, Sort Of

People want to know why a Chihuahua would bond with a chicken, and the honest answer is that nobody asked the Chihuahua, because he would not have given a useful response. Dogs do not explain themselves. If you ask a Chihuahua why he loves a chicken, he will look at you, then look at the chicken, then look back at you with an expression that clearly means, what is your problem, this is obviously my chicken.

My best theory is that animals do not carry around the long list of rules we carry. They do not know that a dog and a chicken are supposed to be a comedy duo at best and a food-chain incident at worst. Nobody handed the Chihuahua a pamphlet on which species he was ALLOWED to love. He just walked up to a chicken one day, decided that was his guy (the chicken may or may not be a guy; I have not asked), and committed fully, the way Chihuahuas commit to everything, which is to say completely and with no plan to ever reconsider.

This is, when you sit with it, a fairly beautiful way to operate. The Chihuahua does not run a background check. He does not wonder what the neighbors will think. He found a friend, the friend happened to be a bird, and that was the end of the inquiry. Meanwhile I have spent approximately eleven years drafting a thank-you note in my head and still have not sent it.

The Part Where I Try To Be Like The Dog

I would like to report that watching this friendship has made me a more open person. It has not, entirely, because I am a slow study and remain deeply suspicious of geese (geese know what they did). But it has reminded me that the best relationships in my life are the ones that, on paper, made no sense. The friend from the wrong department. The neighbor who roots for the wrong team. My wife, who married me, a man who once tried to argue with a self-checkout machine and lost.

The Chihuahua does not know any of this. He is not trying to teach me anything. He is busy. He has a chicken to escort around the yard, a flock to oversee, and a powerful conviction that he is the largest, most important animal present. He is none of those things, and he is somehow exactly right about all of it. I am not making this up.

So if you ever feel like the unlikely member of your own little flock, the small one who somehow ended up in charge, take it from a tiny dog who picked a chicken: confidence is mostly just refusing to notice the size difference. The chicken, for the record, has never once corrected him.