Chihuahuas: Out of Fashion

As fashions in animals go, Chihuahuas had a pretty good run.  But now, at least six years after their popularity crested, there seem to be many more of the dogs available for adoption than people who want a Chihuahua for a house pet.

Chihuahuas, the smallest of dogs, trace their heritage to the Mexican state for which they are named.  They are said to be very loyal and surprisingly fierce given their size, typically about five pounds.  Some of them yap and are irritating.  On the plus side, they are good at ridding infested areas of rats.

Their recent popularity may have started in late 1997, when a Chihuahua was the spokesdog for a Mexican food chain -- "You quiero Taco Bell" -- in an advertising campaign that cost $500 million and continued until the middle of 2000.  The company stopped the advertisements and fired its ad agency abruptly after an unprecedented six percent quarterly drop in same-store sales.

Then there were the movies:  A Chihuahua named Bruiser starred with Reese Witherspoon in "Legally Blonde" in 2001 and its 2003 sequel. "Beverly Hills Chihuahua" made a profit in 2008 and was followed by two sequels that went straight to video.

Many celebrities were photographed with Chihuahuas during this period:  Paris Hilton, Jennifer Love Hewitt, Hillary Duff, Anne Heche, Sharon Osborne, Britney Spears, Madonna, Rosie O'Donnell and  Mickey Rourke, along with lesser luminaries.

Then the trend was over.

Between 2008 and 2009, shelters in Los Angeles County took in 4,741 Chihuahuas, 25 percent more than the previous year.  By the end of 2009, animal shelters in Oakland were getting 10 Chihuahuas daily, and Chihuahuas made up 30 percent of the dog population at animal shelters statewide.

The overpopulation of Chihuahuas seemed most acute in the American Southwest, and airlifts of the dogs were undertaken to other areas -- Idaho, New York, Pennsylvania and Canada among them.

But soon even New York City began to report it had more than enough of the small dogs.  Shortly after 2010, Chihuahuas had replaced pit bulls as the dogs most often left with the city's animal control agency.   Between 2010 and 2012, the Chihuahua intake was 2,276; only 1,549 were adopted. The others presumably were euthanized.

In 2013, the two largest Phoenix shelters took in 10,535 Chihuahuas and euthanized 2,100 of them. In 2012, one of the two shelters euthanized 2,476 of the dogs.

 Last year, the Phoenix neighborhood of Maryvale logged 6,000 complaints about Chihuahuas, many feral and said to be roaming in packs, sometimes with larger dogs.  They were chasing children in the streets as they walked to school.

According to Zillow, the Maryvale population is low-income with many foreign-speaking residents.  By May, officials were considering placing ads on Spanish-language radio stations to urge dog owners to have their pets neutered and spayed as part of responsible pet ownership.  It couldn't hurt.

What seems to have happened, in the years when Chihuahuas were popular, was overbreeding to satisfy the new demand for diminutive pets that could be carried in handbags.  Now demand has dropped, and overpopulation is leading to increases in euthanization.

In 2012, the NBC affiliate in Seattle quoted a local Humane Society official saying this:  "At one time it was Dalmatians, at another it was Rottweilers.  There are trends in animal ownership.  And we definitely see it at the shelter."

Fashion is fun and applies to many aspects of life, but it's a little creepy when animals become fashion accessories for a limited period and then are abandoned and killed after their popularity fades.