I’ve been noticing a lot more tiny dogs outside lately, that look barely bigger than ferrets. When I was a kid, I would have thought a cat-sized dog was pretty small. Are the smallest dogs today much smaller than their ancestors a couple decades ago, or are the breeds just becoming more common? Are breeders still trying to get perpetually smaller dogs, or is it generally thought that they are small enough now?
The proliferation of Chihuahua crossbreeds, and breeding from them (that is, Chiyorkie breeding with Chiyorkie, where both parents are a mixture of Chihuahua and Yorkshire Terrier) would indicate to me that yup, breeders are still trying for smaller dogs as would all those new crossbreed names. (Crosses with poodles are very common too, but that doesn’t indicate size, since it’s often standard poodles rather than miniature). Look on any ‘dogs for sale’ site and you’ll see what I mean.
I don’t know if it’s so much that a given small breed of dog is smaller than 20 years ago. You may simply be noticing an increase in the amount of people opting to get a smaller dog.
Mixes/mutts/etc. may be a different story.
I think it’s mostly that there are more people with tiny toy dogs. Breed standards for toy breeds haven’t changed recently. The breed standard for Chihuahuas has been under 6 lbs and 9" for a long time - that’s pretty tiny. Many show champions are 2-4 pounds! I’ve had two pound pet rats before…
There are probably more extra-small individuals of toy breeds around now because smaller is often considered better (mostly because it’s challenging to achieve), and I know ‘teacup’ dogs of several breeds have been trendy for 15 years or more. People look for extreme smallness when they set out to buy a puppy, and dogs are produced to supply that demand.
Large breeds go through trends of producing more extra-large individuals. ‘Royal’ poodles were a past trend, ‘king’ German Shepherds and ‘bully’ Pitbulls are current ones.
They’re obviously small breeds, like chihuahuas and pugs and crosses. Have you noticed any miniature German Shepherds or Rottweilers?
That is like the old joke. A California family took a vacation across the Mexican border. In Tijuana, a cute rat kept following one of the children around so they decided to adopt it and take it home. Once they got home, it seemed a little sick so they took it to the vet.
The vet took one look at it and exclaimed:
That isn’t a rat, it is a Mexican Chihuahua! :eek::eek::eek:
I’ve walked by this place here in Chicago several times - Pocket Puppies. The sign in the window says they specialize in “Teacup” size dogs, which I take to be a size smaller than Toy. So yeah, it seems like breeders are going for smaller dogs.
How small could dogs get? If we took thensmallest chihuahuas and bred them together, then took the smallest puppies and bred them together, etc, etc, could we halve their size? Make them mouse-sized? What?
There’s got to be some physical limits, and I wouldn’t be surprised if current breeders were close to them. For one thing, very tiny dogs are already prone to hypothermia. I would guess that the dog’s metabolism just wasn’t designed to maintain heat adequately for that small a body mass. Most tiny warm blooded animals have fierce metabolic rates.
As a data point for how small the general canid design can go and still function adequately in some kind of natural environment, note that the smallest wild canid is the fennec fox - listed there as 1.5 - 3.5 pounds. Also note that it is a desert animal, living in the Sahara.
I came in to reference the same place. The running joke (though it’s really not funny) among city vets is that they should all get together and send the biggest bouquet of flowers/fruit/food basket at Christmastime to that place, with a big “Thank You” sign for all the business. If it’s a tiny puppy and it has parvo, it probably came from there. Guess it’s a good thing they charge such a premium to their buyers, since people with that much money to spend on a pocket puppy mill munchkin dog are the only ones with enough money to spend treating parvo.
The teacup sizes have been around for a while, it’s just there are more people buying them now so they are seen more often.
I’ve heard that Paris Hilton gets credit for making more people buy tiny dogs, she used to be seen with them a lot.