"I will keep stepping on your head till you leave my kittens alone."

May 21, 2013 7:32 AM

Brave Chihuahua protects Kittens from Evil Puppy. [slyt | cute]
posted by quin (59 comments total)

"Who's the alpha? Who's the alpha?"
posted by mightygodking at 7:35 AM on May 21, 2013 [1 favorite]

I want to hug every participant in this video until they squeak kind of uncomfortably.
posted by elizardbits at 7:37 AM on May 21, 2013 [12 favorites]

Puppy: OMG KITTEHS I wanna play, wanna play! Play! Wanna play! Play! PLAY! KITTEH PLAY!
Chihuahua : Walk away, son. WALK AWAY.
Kitten: ?
posted by dabitch at 7:39 AM on May 21, 2013 [20 favorites]

The kittens look like preschoolers who are watching WWE for the first time.
posted by elizardbits at 7:41 AM on May 21, 2013 [2 favorites]

kittens love WWE.
posted by sweetkid at 7:44 AM on May 21, 2013 [5 favorites]

I notice the video cuts out right before the, "Okay, fine. I give up," moment.
posted by charred husk at 7:47 AM on May 21, 2013 [1 favorite]

I like how the kittens do that kitten thing of "let's form a large gray kitteny mass and this will surely frighten the bouncing slobbery toothy thing off"
posted by sweetkid at 7:49 AM on May 21, 2013 [5 favorites]

JUST LIKE VOLTRON
posted by elizardbits at 7:51 AM on May 21, 2013 [19 favorites]

Oh, man, this is not helping my Kitten Fever.

And they're at that stage where they look like tiny drunks all the time!
posted by The Underpants Monster at 7:51 AM on May 21, 2013 [11 favorites]

Wow, that chihuahua is dominating. I'm not sure he knows the kittens are there, i think he just wants to show the other dog who's boss.
posted by bleep at 7:51 AM on May 21, 2013 [1 favorite]

Um, isn't letting lil' baby kittens out around a well-meaning but ultimately large, strong, toothy puppy kind of dangerous?
posted by leotrotsky at 7:52 AM on May 21, 2013 [4 favorites]

Of course he knows the kittens are there, a pile of gray fuzzy kittens attracts all attention towards itself like a gray fuzzy cuddly attention magnet.
posted by sweetkid at 7:53 AM on May 21, 2013 [1 favorite]

leotrotsky:

Um, isn't letting lil' baby kittens out around a well-meaning but ultimately large, strong, toothy puppy kind of dangerous?

That's what I wonder since it seems like the Chihuahua gives up at the end yet there is no adorable footage of the puppy playing with kittens. I will assume good end (humans intercede) instead of bad end (kitten bloodbath).
posted by charred husk at 7:54 AM on May 21, 2013

Little baby kittens have sharp teeth and claws and any overenthusiastic puppy will likely soon learn a valuable lesson.
posted by elizardbits at 7:55 AM on May 21, 2013 [6 favorites]

Yeah my cat has tried to take on dogs three times his size and up, even though in every case the dog was all "huh? you don't wanna play? WHY ARE YOU SO MAD OMG MY FACE PLEASE STOP"
posted by sweetkid at 8:03 AM on May 21, 2013 [8 favorites]

All the other dog wants to do is hug the kittens! With its teeth! Is that so wrong?
posted by jscalzi at 8:09 AM on May 21, 2013 [9 favorites]

I really like chihuahuas. Many are definitely not at all aware that they are small. They have great big bombastic personalities sometimes and can be really fun and loyal pets.

That said, my general reaction to the video is that they should have stopped filming and separated the dogs. They can get hurt like that even if they are just playing.
posted by Drinky Die at 8:09 AM on May 21, 2013 [1 favorite]

Um, isn't letting lil' baby kittens out around a well-meaning but ultimately large, strong, toothy puppy kind of dangerous?

Yes. My brother's dog used to kill the kittens his barn cats had.
posted by orange swan at 8:20 AM on May 21, 2013

Um, isn't letting lil' baby kittens out around a well-meaning but ultimately large, strong, toothy puppy kind of dangerous?

You know there isn't some universal answer to this question right?

"Depends on the dog/puppy, you should know your animal's demeanor" excepted that is... Not to mention that exposing/training dogs to react properly to other animals/pets is actually a really good and thoughtful thing for pet owners to do.

My brother's dog used to kill the kittens his barn cats had.

Your brother's dog was acting like an asshat. Please do not condemn all dogs to living under the label of killers based upon your study with a sample size of one.
posted by RolandOfEld at 8:32 AM on May 21, 2013 [2 favorites]

Getting teabagged by that chihuahua didn't seem to particularly deter that dog from wanting to teeth-hug those kitties.
posted by Anything at 8:34 AM on May 21, 2013

If I owned that little dog, I would outfit it with accessories to make it as bad-ass in appearance as it is when it is protecting kittens.
posted by angrycat at 8:34 AM on May 21, 2013

That black pup is giving the most enthusiatic, deepest, " wanna plaaaaaaay" bows I have ever seen.
posted by The Whelk at 8:34 AM on May 21, 2013 [14 favorites]

because kittens
posted by sweetkid at 8:37 AM on May 21, 2013 [1 favorite]

Is there anything on earth a dog won't play bow to?

A statue?
A baby?
Twin babies?
A large rock?
posted by Bunny Ultramod at 8:43 AM on May 21, 2013 [2 favorites]

This Is Just To Say

I have saved
the kittehs
that were on
the greenlawn

and which
you were probably
trying
to play with

Forgive me
they were undefended
so furry
and so gray

-William Chihuahua Williams
posted by Doleful Creature at 8:49 AM on May 21, 2013 [45 favorites]

Oh, man, this is not helping my Kitten Fever.

Then you get a decade or more of Cat. There may be a herbal treatment for this medical condition.

And they're at that stage where they look like tiny drunks all the time

Need a cure for kitten fever? As your doctor for Medical Marijuana. Dosing - soak the MJ in butter then add that butter to the Cat's food. (Now with 100% more lazy cat)
posted by rough ashlar at 9:10 AM on May 21, 2013 [1 favorite]

While the black puppy definitely wanted to play with the kittens rather than bite them, I think I would have separated them about the time the growling started. Too easy to hurt such small kittens accidentally when overenthusiastically play-fighting.
posted by tavella at 9:21 AM on May 21, 2013 [1 favorite]

One wonders how a bunch of kittens ended up on the lawn close to a playful puppy. I suppose all is fair in the pursuit of getting views on YouTube.
posted by KokuRyu at 9:29 AM on May 21, 2013 [2 favorites]

They grew there in the lawn, don't you know how kittens get made? They are just not old enough to be plucked yet.
posted by sweetkid at 9:42 AM on May 21, 2013 [4 favorites]

Would you rather fight one rottweiler or a rottweiler's weight in chihuahuas?

Tough call.
posted by JackFlash at 9:45 AM on May 21, 2013 [1 favorite]

Is this in a cuddle attack or a death attack? Also what are their alignments.
posted by elizardbits at 10:07 AM on May 21, 2013

Easy call, I'd fight the Rottweiler. Chihuahuas are nuts.
posted by sweetkid at 10:08 AM on May 21, 2013 [1 favorite]

Also what are their alignments.

The big puppy is neutral eager, the chihuahua is lawful bossy, and the kittens are chaotic cuddly.
posted by eriko at 10:20 AM on May 21, 2013 [35 favorites]

Damn, Chihuahaha, way to be a bossy boss boss. My favorite part was when one of the kittens caught on and went all Halloween Kitty on everybody.

Also, kittens in general = A+
posted by These Birds of a Feather at 10:48 AM on May 21, 2013

elizardbits: "JUST LIKE VOLTRON"

"And I'll form the..." ACK ACK HURK HURKKK

Oh god, no Voltron, bad robot, not on the carpet!
posted by boo_radley at 10:49 AM on May 21, 2013 [3 favorites]

The best worst KITTY VOLTRON attack is DANDER WAVE
posted by Doleful Creature at 11:03 AM on May 21, 2013 [1 favorite]

seriously guys i had to get a prescription ointment for my eyes
posted by Doleful Creature at 11:04 AM on May 21, 2013 [2 favorites]

I suspect that the dog is just as happy playing with the chihuahua as with the kittens. I have a 105 lb half Lab/half Wiem that lets my in-laws chihuahua "bully" him with great patience and tolerance. Knowing that there is nothing the little bugger can do to harm him goes a long way.
posted by Billiken at 11:10 AM on May 21, 2013

Too easy to hurt such small kittens accidentally when overenthusiastically play-fighting.

And kittens do not know the rules of Puppy Fighting - the pertinent one here being

When the other guy or gal bites too hard, turn your back on him or her and look up and away and he or she will stop. Usually.

No cat ever looks away from a dog unless and until it turns and runs.
posted by y2karl at 11:12 AM on May 21, 2013

Chihuahuas are the Joe Pesci/Nicki Santoros of the dog world. They know you're bigger than they are, they just don't care. Get'em riled and they'll keep coming for you until you stop breathing or they do. Never seen more mad foolhardy hostility from a dog than from an offended Chihuahua, and I've been party to a pit bull attack. The difference between that and if we had been set on by Chihuahuas? The pits I could scare away with enough noise after they started biting my dog. Chihuahuas would have kept going until we were all done for.

When they're calm, they're perfectly charming of course.
posted by BigLankyBastard at 12:12 PM on May 21, 2013

I would very much like to get nekkid and roll around on the lawn with the puppy, the chihuahua and the kittens.

SO FUZZY!
posted by Ruthless Bunny at 12:43 PM on May 21, 2013

Poor puppy! He just wants to plaaaaay and all the small creatures are too bewildered or cranky to play with him. Sniffle!

I love dog play bows. There's something so charming about the existence of a deliberate behavior that means "HI HI HAVE FUN WITH ME."
posted by nicebookrack at 12:48 PM on May 21, 2013 [2 favorites]

I have serious questions that I would like to pose to the cameraman, largely centering on how the hell this situation came about in the first place.
posted by gern at 12:58 PM on May 21, 2013

I knew if I just kept scrolling down there would be a cure for the harrowing (but beautiful) post above. Thank you Metafilter.
posted by chortly at 1:48 PM on May 21, 2013 [1 favorite]

Who's the dog now, man?
posted by ooga_booga at 2:21 PM on May 21, 2013 [2 favorites]

...how the hell this situation came about in the first place.

Barn cats, maybe.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 2:39 PM on May 21, 2013

It's kind of sad how dogs and cats have evolved to have such different signal systems. When a dog wants to be friendly, he's jumping around like an idiot, making direct eye contact, his mouth wide open, his tail swinging wildly around. When a cat wants to be friendly, he comes and sits quietly beside you, looking very sleepy, eyes nearly closed. To a cat, almost everything a friendly dog does is signaling I AM CRAZY AND I WILL KILL YOU!

So it's especially sweet when they can actually form some sort of bond. It did seem like the chihuahua was defending the kittens, which was unfortunate for the hapless pup but still very cute. "I told you to STEP OFF, man!"
posted by Ursula Hitler at 4:16 PM on May 21, 2013

shorties banding together, stickin' out for one another. i like.
posted by ifjuly at 4:55 PM on May 21, 2013 [1 favorite]

"Depends on the dog/puppy, you should know your animal's demeanor" excepted that is... Not to mention that exposing/training dogs to react properly to other animals/pets is actually a really good and thoughtful thing for pet owners to do.

I am sympathetic to your argument and agree with your prescription. And yet.

Out of a hundred percent, the percentage of people who have trained their dogs to react properly to other animals/pets, well, it can be counted on the fingers of one hand, I suspect.

Where I live, we allow dogs. I like dogs and we have some serious dog owners who spend hours training their dogs and keep them on leashes and have dog walkers walk them when they are off at work. But there are also some dogs here who spend the most miserable lives alone inside for 10, 12 and up to 16 hours a day and who have the most profound behavioral problems. Even of the most responsible dog owners here, very few have addressed this issue.

I knew a dog once, the sweetest, most gentle yellow lab you could ever meet and its owner confided to me once that she was walking it one day with some friends and they passed a yard with a low fence and a kitten on the lawn within. And that sweet dog, tail wagging, reached over that fence and picked that kitten up and with one snap of its head, broke that kitten's neck before anyone could do a thing. And it was on a leash. It just happened that fast.

We have outdoor cats in the neighborhood. I tell all the dog owners that story, then tell them that I must treat all dogs here as potential killers, insist that they be on leashes at all times, and remind them that a dog in this town which even bites a person or a pet once can be reported as a vicious animal and quite possibly can be seized by Animal Control and put down, and that whether or not their dogs are on a leash, that if something like what happened to that kitten happens here, they are going to be in a world of trouble, if I can help it at all.
posted by y2karl at 8:43 PM on May 21, 2013

That said, some of the most adorable kitten videos I have seen involve small kittens interacting with very large and very patient dogs of breeds like German Sheperds and Dobermans, so I know what you say can be true. But then again, in my experience, an unfamilar cat outside is not at all the same as a familiar cat inside for most dogs.
posted by y2karl at 8:50 PM on May 21, 2013

The term you're looking for here is prey drive -- in the case above of the Labrador and the kitten, the Lab saw the kitten as prey, not companion or fellow-dog or any other nebulous canine category of Moving Alive Thing That I Am Not Predatory At. (This category is okay because dogs don't have that rule about sentence ends and prepositions.)

Some dogs have it in spades (see: terriers, sighthounds). Some dogs don't have it at all (see: bloodhounds particularly, who get the prey and are all WOOHOO HEY HI OK NOW WHAT). Most dogs have it in some degree, which, depending on situation, external stimulus, etc, can increase or decrease with no reason that makes much sense to humans. But that's because they're dogs, and they operate on wacky dog logic.

My childhood dog, an 85lb behemoth of hair and cowardice, would nuzzle at my hamster and let him crawl all over her. My current dog, who behaves much like this puppy except for being larger and fluffier, would love to eat a squirrel. The dog immediately previous to Current Dog would snatch opossums from the top of a six foot privacy fence but play I Lick Your Face You Bite My Face with the cat as a form of somewhat slap-happy affection.

Pups like the black one in the video are still working out their own drives, prey and otherwise, in the form of play. I doubt that particular situation was dangerous to the kittens, since there was human supervision, but I would not leave a puppy that large and energetic around kittens unsupervised.

Which is all to say: it really depends on the dog, and it is vital for all dog owners to learn their dog's prey drives and which external stimuli can trigger or dampen them. Being leashed definitely helps, but there is also such a thing as leash aggression, which can be a prey-drive (or other drive) trigger for a dog.

Dogs are very simple creatures and very complicated at the same time.
posted by cmyk at 9:04 PM on May 21, 2013 [3 favorites]

That chihuahua is, in his own mind, a dog superhero. Well, probably the kittens too. It's funny watching alpha male coming out in such a small dog but he backed it up, at least as far as the puppy was concerned. And the cuteness was off the charts, 2 thumbs up.
posted by doctor_negative at 11:02 PM on May 21, 2013

Aww, the black one looks like our foster dog Maggie. We've had her for eight months and she's finally getting adopted on Friday - by someone who really really likes her and is really excited.

I've already shed some tears and there will be more but I'm really happy for her. She was a little challenging at first, but she really wanted to be a good dog, and now she is (and we did it with just treats, and the occasional "time-out", no punishments).

Based on my experience with Maggie, the black dog just wants to play. The bouncing around with the tail and ears up is absolutely characteristic. If the dog was seriously attacking, you'd see the tail down, the ears drawn back, the teeth in a snarl.

It seems to me like a good-natured dog who likes to play with other dogs, and I'm sure that's why the videographer watched and did nothing...
posted by lupus_yonderboy at 11:57 PM on May 21, 2013

I've been owned by a Chihuahua for 9 years and I can tell you exactly what was going through his territorial little brain. He trotted over to the kittens, sniffed them out to make sure they were ok, and then schooled the puppy to settle down.

Those kittens belong to him, they are under his protection. That little turn around in front of them with his butt towards the puppy at 40 seconds? That's him using the biggest, strongest part of his body to block. The Chihuahua then escalates his body language by mounting the other dog to show his dominance. The growling? For a Chihuahua that was about a 3 on a scale of 10.

In other words, that is a really well socialized and trained Chihuahua who is protecting his property and an example of an adult dog who is teaching a younger dog proper behavior. Of course I would never leave a dog(s) alone with kittens, or even with each other without proper supervision.
posted by lootie777 at 4:31 AM on May 22, 2013 [1 favorite]

That is a very wise dog, and it deserves an honorary dog-torate.
posted by homunculus at 11:53 PM on May 22, 2013

Dog found nursing a kitten in South Carolina
posted by homunculus at 10:29 AM on May 23, 2013

Terrier dog befriends gosling at Leeds animal centre
posted by homunculus at 10:31 AM on May 23, 2013

Cat breastfeeds orphaned ducklings
posted by homunculus at 12:51 PM on May 24, 2013

Cats vs Fox
posted by homunculus at 3:49 PM on June 1, 2013