I'm sure you've asked yourself more than once, right? There are several theories about it, specifically three, that we are going to explain to you and that can justify this curious behavior. Are you ready to find out where they get so much "bad temper"?
Before we go crazy, we know that not ALL little furry dogs are like this. But we have to admit that those of small stature (up to 9 kg is considered a small dog) tend to have a somewhat particular temper, don't you think? Now, why is that? Why does this happen? The magazine Muy Interesante revealed that there are 3 theories for this, so let's explore them.
The first of them is the most common or well-known: as they are small, they feel more helpless and are more afraid of everything. Being smaller in size, they tend to be more easily frightened by more stimuli (large dogs, medium-sized dogs, cats, humans, children, shadows, hands, objects, noises) this makes their fears increase in general and as a measure to protect themselves they always react defensively.
Another theory they discussed, somewhat particularly, is that this behavior is the result of the treatment that humans give to small dogs. How? Now you will see, we explain it better. The parents of these furry dogs tend to humanize small dogs more, and treat them as if they were helpless and weak little babies. When we adopt such a "protective" posture, this can lead them to socialize much less with other dogs and humans, and even to react inappropriately to stressful situations.
And the last one, which we had never heard here, says that this behavior is part of the evolution of dogs of this size. How is this possible? Very simple, the consequences of being attacked (by a human) a small dog are much less worrying than if you are attacked by a German Shepherd or a large/medium-sized dog, for example. So, this last theory holds that it is possible that over the years humans have been more concerned with the aggressive or ferocious behavior of larger dogs (serious consequences), and not that of small dogs (minor consequences). And that we have invested more time in modifying certain behaviors in large dogs than in small dogs. Isn't that very interesting? What do you think?
