Photo courtesy of Pixabay.com
Consider the problematic issues associated with California: earthquakes, fires, epic rain, epic drought, mudslides, unreliable water supply, collapsing economic infrastructure, and too many Chihuahuas.
Yes, I said Chihuahuas. That is not an auto-correction.
Chihuahuas became a problem for California beginning early in the 2000s when celebrities like Paris Hilton were shown shopping with the little dogs carried in designer handbags. Hilton’s “Tinkerbell” starred with her in five seasons of The Simple Life.
In 2001 Legally Blond’s pint-sized “Bruiser” went to Harvard Law School with Elle Wood. The movie poster shows cute-as-a-button Bruiser dressed in his signature color of pink (the same fav color of his owner in the movie).
The 2008 Disney film Beverly Hills Chihuahua opened the Chihuahua floodgates wider with damsel-dog-in-distress Chloe wearing diamonds and booties.
The message that (for whatever reason) primarily Californians seemed to take away was this: If you want to be trendy and chic, go ahead and follow that impulse to own a Chihuahua.
Because pop culture brought forth the desire to be Chihuahua owners, backyard breeders and puppy mills saw an opportunity to cash in on the trend that resulted in just too darned many of this breed.
The LA Times in 2016 noted that the Chihuahua was the #1 registered breed in California at 15% of total registration. That was a 42% increase from six years prior! And that 15% covered only dogs that had been registered by their owners.
Sadly, thousands more of the dogs lived on the streets or in shelters.
In 2008 nearly 5000 Chihuahuas were run through California shelters, many of which had to reconfigure their “bigger dog” pens and runs to accommodate the itty-bitty breed. At one point it was estimated that the Chihuahua made up 30 – 50% of the California animal shelter population.
Surprisingly, according to one site, the Chihuahua is the second most euthanized breed across America, with Pit Bulls coming in at #1.
In 2009 actress Katherine Heigl spent $25,000 to fly 68 Chihuahuas across the country to New Hampshire where people were on SPCA-approved waiting lists to adopt them. This event was titled, “Project Flying Chihuahuas.” (Nope, not making this up.)
From 2010-2016 Virgin Airlines took up the cause and each year flew shelter Chihuahuas from San Francisco to the New York area for adoption. This project was dubbed “Operation Chihuahua Airlift.”
But the California overpopulation of the breed appears to continue as a problem.
Now I know what you’re asking yourself: “She has a hound dog; why is she writing about Chihuahuas?”
Apparently, I was trendy and chic three decades before Paris Hilton was, as I owned a Chihuahua when I was 15. I had been pestering my parents for a dog and Pepe is what my dad brought home. When I left home at 19 for a move to California, Pepe became Grandma Elizabeth’s dog.
The picture below is an American Greetings birthday card recently received from a dear friend who was my best friend in high school. She wrote that she bought it because it reminded her of Pepe.
The day the card arrived I was listening to an NPR audiobook about dogs and they mentioned the story about Project Flying Chihuahuas. Wow! Two instances on the same day can’t be a coincidence, so I took it as a sign and started my research for this post.
The moral of this post is threefold:
1) Please don’t follow celebrity trends.
2) Adopt a pet from a shelter.
3) Be a responsible pet owner and have your pet spayed or neutered.
And PS – Bruiser’s death in 2016 was widely reported by the media. See below for links.
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