LISAN JUTRAS
From Thursday's Globe and Mail Published on Thursday, May. 03, 2007 8:48AM EDT Last updated on Tuesday, Mar. 31, 2009 10:44PM EDT
Marie Antoinette, who was a monarch when it was still cool to be one, set a few trends in her lifetime. She was a great lover of dogs, and at least two breeds topped the food chain in Louis XVI's court: the Great Pyrenees and the papillon.
These days, royalty lives in the pages of In Touch magazine, and no dog has been splashed across the tabloids more than Tinkerbell, Paris Hilton's chihuahua - except maybe Bit Bit. (That's Bit Bit Spears to you, but, if you have to ask . . .) It's a high life these dogs live - for a year or two - and then when their fickle owners realize that they a) poop, b) can bite and c) can't be given away to Goodwill, they, like the wedgie heel or oversized sunglasses, vanish from the public eye.
"We're getting a lot of chihuahuas . . . from young women in their teens and early 20s," says Nathalie Houle, co-founder and chair of Canadian Chihuahua Rescue and Transport, an organization that helps find homes for the surrendered dogs. The number of surrendered chihuahuas it receives has "doubled or tripled in the past 18 to 24 months," Ms. Houle said.
The chihuahua may have been relegated to the dustbins of history, but the popularity of the puggle, a pug-beagle cross seen with celebrities such as Jake Gyllenhaal and Sylvester Stallone, has exploded.
After a New York Times Magazine article put the breed in the spotlight in February, dozens of puggle breeders popped up all over the continent, pushing the cost of the mutt - now renamed a "designer dog" - up to $1,100. Nonetheless, Canadian websites are still plastered with messages from people clamouring for the mixed breed.
The Toronto Humane Society's shelter has just weathered a surge of chihuahuas and is now bracing for the next tidal wave. "Oh, they're coming," spokesman Lee Oliver says of the puggle.
Seen in this light, Marie Antoinette's dog had it comparably good. Instead of being shunted off to live in a cage, her papillon allegedly went with her to the guillotine. Legend says it was spared the blade.
Lisan Jutras is a Toronto-based writer and editor. She has two cats,
a Boricua dog and many garments covered in pet hair.
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