San Francisco Shelters Overrun with Chihuahuas

Dec 28th 2009

Calling Katherine Heigl! Her charitable efforts on behalf of animals may be needed again.

As we reported recently, the Grey's Anatomy star donated $25,000 -- via her charity organization the Jason Debus Heigl Foundation -- to fly 25 lap dogs from Los Angeles to Nashua, N.H. The transfer is an attempt to get the dogs to a part of the country with a high demand for small dogs, but little supply.

It turns out that Los Angeles isn't the only California city dealing with high numbers of small dogs -- the entire state is affected. Last week San Francisco's Animal Care and Control hosted a press event to draw attention to their own tiny problem -- chihuahuas.

"A year and a half ago we started to see an increase in chihuahuas coming to the shelter, either as stray dogs or surrendered by their owners," SF AC&C spokesperson Deb Campbell tells Paw Nation. "It's been a steady increase since then. We've never seen this before with chihuahuas." In years past, the shelter always had an overabundance of pit bulls and pit-bull mixes. Chihuahuas were rare, Campbell tells Paw Nation. "They would be adopted out immediately."

The overall consensus among shelters and rescuers in California, along with the Humane Society of Greater Nashua, is that pop culture is to blame for this explosion. "People see little dogs as a nice Louis Vuitton handbag or beautiful Prada sunglasses," Campbell tells Paw Nation. "They're an accessory to a lot of people. They've seen starlets on TV, movies, and in magazines with these dogs, and so people bred to meet that demand. And they went overboard."