Breed Profiles

I bought a Papillon because I wanted a small dog. That was the whole reasoning, and it was wrong in every way that mattered.

Bo weighed three and a half kilos at his heaviest. He could sit inside a shoebox. He also learned, by his second year, to open the utility room door by hooking a paw under it and pulling, and he taught himself which drawer the treats lived in by watching my hand. Small, yes. Simple, absolutely not.

The breed name means butterfly in French, for the ears, which fan out and fringe with long hair until the dog looks permanently mid-flight. They descend from the toy spaniels that show up in Renaissance paintings, tucked under the arms of women who clearly had staff. There is a drop-eared version too, the Phalène, which means moth, and if you find that naming convention charming then you are probably the right sort of person for this breed.

What surprised me was the brain. Papillons place absurdly high in obedience and agility rankings, competing against border collies and shepherds and often beating them, and the first time I saw one run a course I understood why. They are fast, precise, and genuinely eager to work out what you want. Bo learned sit in an afternoon, and then he learned that sitting produced cheese, and then he began sitting at me, pointedly, whenever the fridge opened. That is the trade with a clever toy dog. You do not get to be lazy about training, because he trains you back.

The problem with treating them as ornaments

Most of the badly behaved Papillons I have met were made that way by kindness. People pick them up instead of letting them walk. They carry them past other dogs. They laugh when a two-kilo puppy growls at a visitor, because it is funny at that size, and by three years old that dog is a snapping, anxious little thing who has never been allowed to solve a single problem for himself.

Bo went everywhere on his own four feet. He met big dogs, calmly, on the lead, and learned that they were dull and mostly ignored him. He rode buses. He sat under cafe tables. None of that was because I am a gifted trainer, it was because I decided early that he was a dog and not a handbag accessory, and the dog he became was confident in a way that made everything easier.

The coat looks like a commitment and mostly is not. There is no undercoat, so it does not mat into felt the way a doodle does, and a comb through twice a week keeps the ear fringes and the trousers respectable. He shed, but lightly. The fur that came off him was fine and drifted rather than clumping. Baths were rare. Nails, on the other hand, needed doing every fortnight, because a dog that light does not wear them down on pavements the way a heavier one does.

Teeth are the real grooming job in a small dog and I was slow to learn it. Toy breeds crowd forty-two adult teeth into a jaw built for fewer, plaque sets fast, and by six or seven you are looking at extractions if nobody has been brushing. I started at four. I wish I had started at four months. The vet was polite about it in the way vets are when they have said the same thing four hundred times.

Health is decent for a small dog with two honest cautions. Kneecaps can slip, the patella sliding out of its groove, and you spot it as a skip in the back leg mid-trot. Some cases need surgery, many just need the dog kept lean and off high furniture. The second is the collapsing windpipe cough that plagues toy breeds, a honking noise that sounds far worse than it usually is. A harness rather than a neck collar helps, and I switched to one the week I first heard it.

Then there is the fragility nobody mentions. A three-kilo dog and a badly placed foot are a bad combination. Bo broke a toe on a step someone did not see, and I know two Papillon owners with the same story about a sofa jump gone wrong. Ramps, low beds, and a house rule that nobody moves quickly through a doorway. That last one takes about a fortnight to become instinct.

They are barky. Not shrill and constant like some toys, but alert, and a Papillon will announce the post, the neighbour's car, a leaf. You can shape it down to a couple of barks and a look, which is what I settled for, and honestly the announcing is part of the deal. Anyone who wants a silent dog should not be buying a spaniel of any size.

Bo lived to fifteen and a half. The last two years he went a bit deaf and slept in a patch of sun on the landing, and he still met me at the door because he could feel the floor change. For a dog that small he took up an enormous amount of room in the house and in the years afterwards, which is the thing about Papillons that the breed descriptions never quite land.

If you want one, go and watch an agility class first. Find the smallest dog on the course with the biggest ears and the most obnoxious enthusiasm. That is what is available to you, if you are willing to do the work. The lap dog version is also available. It is just a much worse dog.