Awhile back I was walking a friend’s dog (it is a Harlequin [sp?] Great Dane) and all of these little dogs would go up to it and start yipping. If we walked by a fence the little dog would try and act tough. The Great Dane of course, looked like, “yeah right whatever” and acted like he could’ve cared less.
Do the little dogs know that they can’t take on a 6 foot 200 pound great dane?
Markxxx,
I think it’s like the little man’s “Napolean” complex. They think that they have a point to make because they think that we think they’re little pipsqueaks (sp).
I have St Bernard and I don’t think that she even realizes that little dogs are “dogs”. She just ignores them like she does our cats. There are two little annoying toy pooples across the street (named sneaker and loafer, ugh- we just call them flip and flop). Everytime my two large dogs are outside they will come to the edge of our property and just bark incessantly. I might have to accidentally step on them one of these days. 
StStella: they ARE toy pooples!! I love it. I apologize to anyone with toy dogs, but I cannot abide them.
My boyfriend used to have a toy poodle, and nothing can convince me that toys are nothing more than the result of genetic mistakes being bred to each other.
Anything. Anything more.
Gyack.
I have a miniature pinscher (named Samson, for that very reason) and I am totally comfortable verifying that little dogs have huge egos.
He is the barkingest, peeingest dog I’ve ever owned. I love him bunches, but I think that he’s worn out my tolerance for pets for a while. He has a few years left in him, and I’ll be supersad when he’s gone, but I’m NOT getting another dog after that.
PS: My apologies to everyone in the tristate area for not being able to get to sleep last night due to Samson’s barking.
Veni, Vidi, Visa … I came, I saw, I bought.
I think that yes, little dogs know they’re little, so they do silly things like bark all night & chase cars to try & prove otherwise.
A long time ago, my ex-husband and I were living next door to a woman with a small dog that she never even tried to chain up. He kept coming out of her yard and chasing cars. Our landlord (we and the lady had the same landlord) kept telling her that if she didn’t do something, the dog was going to get hit by a car. But she had some “unique” ideas about raising pets, and just couldn’t deal with the thought of restraining her beloved Sparky. He did get hit by a car eventually, and she was all broken up about it.
We have two dachshunds, one of whom is still a puppy and has no clue whatsoever about anything, but the other certainly acts as if she were six feet seven and carrying a loaded .44 magnum.
“non sunt multiplicanda entia praeter necessitatem”
– William of Ockham
We have an average sized dog (a mutt), who ignores small dogs, will take on any big dog, and is absolutely terrified of cats.
We don’t know why.
If you’re an optimist, you haven’t been paying attention.
Meet Zippy the Pinhead/Destructo Dog, otherwise known as Valentine, our 8 month old Basenji mix.
She’s fearless. . . .strong as a human . . . and barks too freaking much.
Does she think of herself as small? I think she considers herself human.
your humble TubaDiva
I still ain’t setting a place for her at the table, though.
Yep, I can verify that little dogs have big egos. My miniature schnauzer thinks she’s a Great Dane. I’ve been debarking her by shooting her with a water pistol, but she still has to act tough when the doorbell rings. And when someone unfamiliar tries to pick up the baby, she tries to bite. So she goes downstairs when company comes…
PR
If you’re not part of the solution you’re just scumming up the bottom of the beaker.
Oh, they think they are huge, and human too, at least The LIONS toy poodle does. Little freak dog sleeps on the water bed, in the middle. Steals my pillow if I get up in the night. Barks at The LION if he kisses me. And demands equal time.
When around other dogs she barks, pulls on her leash and paws the ground like a bull. Dumb dog, most of the dogs she does that around could eat her with one bite.
Lioness
I can vouch that little dogs have big attitudes. My neighbors across the street own a chihuahua. They let the dog wander around their front yard without a leash and often it just stays on the porch.
One day when it was out, one of the people who lived down the street was walking with his rottweiler (on a leash mind you), and the chihuahua runs up to it, barking, and practically attacks the rottweiler. All the rottweiler did was grab the pipsqueak by its rear end and flung it back into its yard, and kept on walking. The chihuahua did get injured and it now has a scar on it’s right hind leg.
Just a few nights ago it was out, and another dog wanders by, and this chihuahua runs after the bigger dog barking. Sigh, you would have thought it would have learned from its experience with the rottweiler. One of the relatives of our neighbors was joking at a party a few nights ago that if the chihuahua attacked, all it could do is gum somone to death.
Also, one my friends owns a chihuahua, and it has the habit of barking and growling whenever someone tries to pet their cat. Silly dog!
My dog when I was growing up was a Cairn Terrier, and she definitely thought she was a much bigger dog. She took on 2 rottweilers, a german shepard, a springer spaniel twice her size that I was dogsitting…and neer learned that they could bite her in two if they really wanted. I always said she was either very brave, or very stupid.
Best story for her was this: My mother would let her out on our front porch to wait for me when I came home from school. So one day this german shepard starts following me - not being threatening at all. I think it was a stray. So, my dog sees this, comes TEARING down the driveway barking her head off. Other dog takes one look at her and runs away. She walked 3 feet off the ground the rest of the day. 
Nope, a lot of them don’t have a clue.
They’ll tackle anything and everything, size not a factor. With some it may because they were bred for hunting purposes and with others it may be drastic inbreeding. Even though I’m a critter fan, yappy, screaming, hyper-aggressive little dogs hold little appeal. (Except possibly as bait in game fishing?)
We did have a great little dog when I was a kid, a toy Manchester, who looked just like a sized-down Doberman. She was a calm dog, and friendly but knew NO fear when defending the family. IIRC, they were bred for squirrel hunting because they are terrifically agile and FAST. The pint sized squirt took on a Shepard–and won. She was just too fast for him to nail. Picture a human batting at an extremely angry and determined hornet.
My friend’s neighbor owned a couple or rat dogs who would sneak under his fence and harass his great dane, constantly yipping. I guess eventually the pooch snapped, because my friend reported his dane siezed one of the dogs by the throat, arched his back, and in one motion ripped the dog off the ground and flung it back over the fence. When it finally reached the end of a graceful eight foot arc, it landed with a dull thud, rolled over several times, and then limped back home, whimpering all the way. The remaining dog took this as a cue and scattered.
My friend says he hasn’t seen them since.
Without a doubt, YES. My sister had a Maltese which thought of himself as superior to all, canines and humans alike. He would actually cross the street and a field to go after TWO very large Rottweilers the size of bears. He also did a lot of things that you wouldn’t expect a dog smaller than most cats to do. He would actually jump up on most any car, unless it was a truck or something else particularly high off the ground. He’d see an approaching bike rider and run to stand right on the sidewalk directly in front of them so that he could bark and growl at them and make them go around him.
This reminds me of one of the funniest things that happened once when a guy passed by on his bike with his two black labs as his means of locomotion. He had rigged up a way so that the two dogs were harnessed to his handlebars. Well, my sister’s Maltese was instantly all over this disaster waiting to happen. Needless to say, the poor guy ended up wrecking all over the place when his dogs were distracted by a little snarling ball of white fluff.
Which also reminds me of the reaction most people had to that dog when it charged at them. Usually it was laughter, followed by the question “what the hell is that?”, since they weren’t sure if it was a dog, cat, rabbit, or otherwise.
Yes, the tone of these stories sounds familiar. When I was a kid, my aunt had two ankle-biting chihuahuas (one after the other) which terrified our entire family. The only time we relaxed was when they were scared by a thunderstorm. Possibly the most revolting thing about these dogs was their names: Chicky and Binky (shudder).
After the second dog died, she got a Lhasa Apso, which was also small and sometimes yappy, but had personality and was considerably nicer to be near, even though it liked to hump peoples’ legs.
I remain puzzled though, possibly because I am not a dog person: what are these dogs doing when they bark at passing people? Are they scared? Defending territory? Just plain crazy?
Can owners can train the dogs to know the edges of their territories more accurately, so that they bark only when people tresspass, rather than at any passsersby?
I have to go with Lioness.Many dogs don’t know they are dogs. They might have a better concept of big and small.
I thought this was interesting last year and since we have more people rather than repeat the question I thought I’d bump this up and see if anyone else can shed light on this phenonmenon.
I have 2 little dogs(Jack Russell Terriers) and they know they are little, but just don’t care. They will take on anything no matter what the size difference.