A twenty-five kilo dog that lunges at strangers gets a training plan. A four kilo dog that does exactly the same thing gets picked up, and the incident is over in half a second because the owner can simply remove the animal from the situation.
That convenience is the central fact of small dog ownership, and it explains most of what goes wrong.
The handling shortcut
Everything a large dog must be taught, a small dog can be lifted through. It does not need to learn to walk past another dog, because it can be carried past. It does not need to accept being examined, because it can be held still. It does not need a recall, because it can be scooped up. It does not need to settle in a café, because it fits on a lap.
Each of those is a reasonable decision taken in a hurry, and together they produce an adult dog with no strategies of its own. Then, at some point, it snaps at a vet or a groomer, and everybody is surprised.
Picking up a frightened dog removes its ability to move away, which is the only thing it was trying to do. Do it often enough and the dog stops trying to leave and starts trying to make the threat leave instead.
The double standard
Growling at a child is a serious matter in a shepherd and a funny story in a chihuahua. Jumping up is a problem in a labrador and a greeting in a jack russell. Pulling towards another dog on a lead is reactivity in a large breed and enthusiasm in a small one.
The behaviour is identical and the consequences are not, which is why it gets tolerated. But the dog's experience is the same: a nervous animal, in a situation it cannot control, producing the only signals it has. The fact that it cannot do much damage does not mean it is not frightened.
It also does not mean it can never do damage. Small dogs bite, and children are often the ones bitten, because they approach the dog at its own height.
What small dogs actually need
The same education as any other dog, with a few physical adjustments.
A harness rather than a collar, because small necks and tracheas are fragile and small dogs pull like anything else. Training at their height: a hand coming down from above is a considerably bigger event when you are thirty centimetres tall, so crouch, turn side-on and let the dog come to you.
Handling practice at home, deliberately, because the vet and the groomer will need to hold them. Recall built properly, on a long line, rather than assumed. A settle on a mat rather than a lap, so that the dog has somewhere to be that is not somebody's body.
And an agreement in the household about when they are lifted. Not never, because sometimes it is the right answer, but by decision rather than by reflex, with a cue so the dog knows it is coming.
The physical realities
Small dogs live longer, which is one of the great advantages, and they come with their own list: dental disease, which is significantly more common in small breeds and considerably under-treated; luxating patellas; collapsing tracheas in some breeds; and a susceptibility to cold and wet that large double-coated dogs do not share.
They also need feeding with more precision, because a hundred extra grams on a five kilo dog is a different proportion of its body than on a retriever, and the treats that produce it are invisible.
The point
Nobody sets out to under-educate a small dog. It happens because the cost of not training it is so low for so long, and because the world responds to small dogs with indulgence rather than with expectations.
The dogs pay for it in a narrower life: carried past things they could have learned to walk past, frightened by procedures they could have learned to tolerate, and increasingly certain that the world is something they need to be rescued from.
The PAWLY breed guide. 198 breeds described honestly, with history, temperament, health and what each is like in a Luxembourg flat. Browse the guide.
General information for dog owners in Luxembourg, not veterinary or legal advice. For your own dog, ask your vet, a qualified behaviourist or your commune. How this journal is written and checked.
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