The advantages of getting a small dog.

This is One Thing, a column with tips on how to live. 

I was 13 years old when my brothers found a bichon frisé under the Christmas tree. I thought that dog was the stupidest little thing I’d ever seen. We’d recently lost our black Lab, Zoe, whom my parents had gotten as a puppy when I was a baby. Zoe and I had grown up together. I thought big dogs were the only real kinds of dogs; little fluffy menaces like this bichon that had shown up in my house were glorified cats, yappy, mean, hopelessly unchic. I refused to participate in the siblingwide debate about what we should name the thing, which, ridiculously, ended up being called Muffin. Her nickname, even more ridiculously, was Muff.

I hated almost everything at 13, but I could not for the life of me hold on to my hatred for this dog. She was obsessed with all five of us kids, quickly learning our school schedules, so that every morning she’d go from bed to bed, oldest to youngest (high school started at the ungodly hour of 7:20), getting a little cuddle in before we left her for the day. She was loyal, loving, and occasionally nuts, and she mostly just wanted to sit next to us on the couch while we watched gobs and gobs of television. Muff died a few years ago, having lived a long, full life well into her teens, a blessing granted to little dogs. They get more time than their bigger counterparts do to spend Earthside with the people they love.

There are a number of other practicalities to having a small dog, as I’ve learned as an adult. A couple of years back, my wife and I heard about a family in the next town over with a litter of puppies, and one thing led to another. We brought home a toy poodle Shih Tzu we named Gus. After a fire broke out in the middle of the night at an apartment building next door, I was grateful to be able to scoop up Gus and ferry him easily outside. I could do the same if he were ever sick or incapacitated without having to worry about how I’d carry or transport him.

He’s small enough to be in the cabin with me on a lot of flights. And though he’s technically not allowed in our bed, Gus does sometimes sneak in early in the morning, and he doesn’t take up too much space or hog too much of the blankets at our feet. Social media loves debating whether dogs belong at bars and cafes, and whether they even want to be there at all, but I feel pretty confident that Gus, who fits perfectly on my lap, is thrilled to spend a couple of hours sitting with me at one of our favorite spots while I read my book and he watches the world go by.

This friendly little terror has changed my life for the better in a million and one ways. And like Muff, like a real dog, he’s not just a pretty ball of fluff. At 17 pounds, he thinks he’s Billy Big Bollocks, with all the personality and smarts of a standard poodle. And he’s not so small that I’d be afraid of pulling a Christopher from the Sopranos, accidentally sitting on and killing him.

Probably the most maligned and very much girl-coded trope of the tiny dog (Chihuahuas, Yorkies) is that they can fit in a purse, Paris Hilton–style: more accessory than pet. Gus is small, not tiny, so he definitely doesn’t fit in a purse, but he is snug as a bug in a big tote bag per requirements for transporting dogs on the subway. And I’m sorry: If you don’t find a dog in a bag adorable, I don’t know what to tell you.

One of the best things about having a small dog, I think, as someone in her 30s with a scary amount of baby fever and an equally scary inability to care for a child at this point in her life, is that Gus is the same size and weight as a 6-to-7-month-old human baby—peak baby, arguably. Holding my little dog who loves me so, so much, dancing with him, and nuzzling my face into his neck does a surprising amount to ameliorate my baby fever. Small dogs aren’t (merely!) silly. They’re wonderful, maybe even ideal, members of the family too.