Small Dogs

This is Chloe. She sleeps on your lap. She fits in your purse. She doesn't pull you on leash. She gets lots of oohs and ahhs at adoption day.

I giggled when I first saw her run the length of the condo—almost exhausted by the time her little legs got her to the other side. It cracked me up to find that a tennis ball was bigger than the size of her head. I even oohed and ahhed at her cuteness myself.

But she doesn't make the bed warm and cozy. (Actually, she only makes it warm and not in the way you want it to be warm.) She hops from one pieces of furniture to another without regard for other living things. She yips. She yaps. She squeals at a high pitch just below what is inaudible to the human ear.  She can't possibly knock you over with hugs when you come home from work.

She is a small dog.

Growing up with golden retrievers, I was always of the mindset that anything smaller than 65 pounds was not really a dog. I thought taking Chloe in for the week might change my mind. I said, "How much trouble could be a 9-pound living thing be?" This is what people say who have never had a small dog or a cat or, worse yet, a baby.

Luckily, Chloe, or Piglet as we've come to call her, is going home to her adopters on Saturday. They probably don't want a big, drooling dog that sheds all over the place and takes up half the bed. But we do. We definitely do.