Opinion: 101 chihuahuas

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Who says bureaucrats aren’t hip to Hollywood? The folks at the L.A. animal shelter wasted no time figuring out that the new movie ‘Beverly Hills Chihuahua,’ to be released Oct. 3, was going to make tiny bug-eyed dogs the hot new fashion accessory -- as though they weren’t already. Which also has the potential to make them sort of like the Easter bunnies that are routinely dumped once they’ve lost the charm of newness, except the bunnies are a lot quieter.

But the point is valid. A check of petfinder.com, a searchable database of adoptable dogs by ZIP code, shows that chihuahuas already are among the most abandoned of dogs. Pounds and rescue groups have hundreds of them in need of homes right here in Southern California, and nationwide there are 7,771 needing adoption -- not that much less than the maligned pit bull, at 9,849. The good news: there are only about 1,000 Dalmatians on the website, which means the overbreeding and overbuying that swept the nation after the 1996 live-action version of ‘101 Dalmatians’ has fallen off.

* Photo courtesy of Cleve Coote/AP