Chihuahuas Are The Latest Hot Dog

Chihuahuas are huge.

Oh, sure - to you it is irony, but to the puniest breed in the world, it is simply destiny, because every dog has his day. Like all significant movements, it began with great words (think "We the people," "I have a dream," "Just do it") forming a solitary phrase that loosed these little dogs of lore:

"Yo quiero Taco Bell."

Hear them roar.

His name is Dinky, and he is to Chihuahuas what Budweiser's Spuds MacKenzie was to bull terriers - a pioneer, a role model, a commercial success. He is the hip, mysterious canine star of Taco Bell's latest ad campaign, charging up fire escapes, roughing up cheap dashboard imitations, offhandedly supplying "Jeopardy!" answers with the casual but stylish indifference of James Dean lighting a cigarette.

The campaign has made Chihuahuas a paws celebre and made a Spanish-language phrase part of the American advertising lexicon. It has also drawn its share of growls from pockets of the Latino community that find the image stereotypical and demeaning. The national headquarters of the League of United Latin American Citizens replied that, essentially, there were more important trees up which to bark.

Now families squeeze into pet stores like Dolphin Pet in Redmond; kids quote the magic phrase and the next thing you know Mom and Dad are walking out the door with a new Chihuahua. Rob DeLettera has seen much impulse buying among the nouveau riche.

"They come in for a bag of birdseed and walk out with a $600 dog," he says. "But then, I've seen diamond rings on people's hands that I could buy a starter house with."

The store's Chihuahua sales have doubled, he said.

It doesn't take much to win someone over: Chihuahuas are fragile, sweet as gummi bears, with a courageousness that belies their pocketbook size. Nevertheless, they shiver like the ball of a whistle, and owners often cloak them in obnoxious little sweaters.

While they are tolerant of many things, including lactose and other small animal pets, they are also suspicious little dogs. You might say they are the Kenneth Starr of dogs. They are slightly high-strung, and you would be, too, if you had such a keen sense of hearing.

There's a new Chihuahua pup in DeLettera's store, a two-pound, cream-and-white specimen with a head like a cue ball. He expects the dog will be sold by the weekend.

"It's just a little bit bigger than a rat," he says.

How can he be sure it's not?

"Sometimes I wonder."

In Issaquah, Chihuahua breeder Margie Hamilton's phone has been ringing off the wall. "You know it when somebody says, `I'm looking for Chihuahuas, like the one in the commercial,' " she says.

She doesn't advertise. Still, they sniff her out.

There is a dark side to all this madness, even darker than the fact that Madonna owns one named Chiquita. It's the possibility that Chihuahuas will suffer a fate similar to the one suffered by many Dalmatians that ended up in shelters - or worse - when owners driven by a Disney movie's popularity discovered their new pets required more attention that they anticipated.

In California, a radio station recently offered a Chihuahua as a contest prize. "That's a terrible thing to do," says Hamilton, who has assumed ownership of many a discarded Dalmatian. "We end up having to take responsibility for their irresponsibility."

Eventually, these four-legged infants will no doubt fall out of favor, but historically, they have weathered such descent before. They are not actually from Mexico, but that is like saying Michael Jordan is not actually from Chicago. Descendants of hairless Asiatic dogs, they outlasted the fall of Montezuma's empire, and eventually were eaten up by an American public that rediscovered them in, and named them after, the Mexican state of Chihuahua. (Good thing they weren't found in Quintana Roo.)

But that is how trends go, and a Pavlovian public now answers to Taco's Bell.

"We started seeing a lot of pugs after `Men in Black' came out," says a woman at Seattle's Eastlake Veterinary Hospital. "We're such sheep, aren't we?"

Marc Ramirez's e-mail address is: mram-new@seatimes.com