Now that I own two, a few people have asked me if Chihuahuas are as shivery and yippy as they’re stereotyped.

Esme has never done the weird shivering thing, not even when our house and the other pets were new, scary and different. She is fine on car rides, too; not that she has been on many rides or very long ones, but she has gone twice to the vet and twice to visit my mom. Mister Fusspot trembled for a little while when we first brought him home, but not since. He also did some shivering after bath, back during the winter, but once we got him bundled into a blankie it stopped quickly so I believe that was actual coldness and not temperament. I suppose if your Chi were more high-strung, there would be more shivering but neither of ours exhibit this behavior.

As far as yipping, Mister Fusspot is a good deal more vocal than Sprocket but it’s not like he yips constantly. I think it’s a natural consequence of his ears being so large - he hears lots of disturbing things that might need barking at. Like I said to Alan one night, “When your ears are the size of salad plates, you tend to notice more.” He’s gotten better about movies/television; many things, particularly doorbells, used to tick him off and require a fusillade of barking, but now it’s usually only if there are dogs barking/howling onscreen (and not always then). If people come over and hang out, he doesn’t stand in front of them yipping annoyingly. Sprocket is the one who barks constantly at visitors, not Mister Fusspot. He will yip for my attention when he needs an up onto the bed, but once he’s given what he wants, he’s quiet.

Now, Mister Fusspot has very definite ideas about my schedule. He does not want me to sleep late on the weekends; he wants me to get up and sit on the couch. He doesn’t mind if I read, play video games, fold laundry or watch movies, but I need to be on the couch so that he can get onto his pillow beside me and go to sleep. I’d like it better if he’d nap on the bed so I could sleep late but, although he has no problem sleeping on the bed at night, after a certain way-too-early point in the morning, I’m supposed to be on the couch, damn it. He will yip as loudly and long as it takes to accomplish this goal.

I haven’t heard Esme bark at all yet. Alan reports that one day a heavy storm rolled in with exceedingly loud thunder. Miss Esme did not appreciate this and let loose with a few tiny barkies to intimidate the thunder. He says that her tiny woofs are very cute. I’d like to hear her. I have heard her growl - she made a teeny, tiny growl at me the other evening when I was trying to take something from her that she wanted to keep (some fiber-fill from a stuffed toy they’d gutted, that I did not want her ingesting).

Much depends on the individual, I’m sure, but our experience has been that Chihuahuas are not nearly as high-strung or yippy as they are sometimes reputed. Mister Fusspot is very sweet and loving, while Esme is totally fearless and very playful. We love and enjoy interacting with ours very much. In the interest of unbiased journalism, Finnovar would like me to add that personally, he finds them exactly as annoying as you might expect, and since he is not allowed to eat them, completely useless.