"He's a bit like an accessory ... a trendy thing to carry around," New Yorker Susanna Chan, 33, says of her constant companion, a tiny ball of active fluff called Bibi.
Already prized pets in a city where living space is at a premium, toy dogs -- Chihuahuas, Yorkies, Maltese, Pomeranians -- have emerged as the fashion statement of the season in the Big Apple, with the emphasis on size, or lack thereof.
"Everybody wants a little dog under their arm," said Nicole Rosenthal, sales manager at American Kennels, one of the most established canine stores in Manhattan.
Like so many fashions in New York, Rosenthal says the surge in demand for toy dog breeds is largely celebrity-driven.
"It's Paris Hilton! It just made it bigger," she said.
The walls bear witness to the store's celebrity clientele, with framed photos of the champion tennis sisters, Venus and Serena Williams, holding up a silver cup with their mini Yorkies inside, and of actress Brooke Shields with what looks like an outsize ball of cotton wool.
Fashion magazines, meanwhile, feature pictures of stars like pop princess Britney Spears and actress Scarlett Johansson fawning over their Chihuahuas, which have just broken into the list of the top 10 most popular breeds, according to the American Kennel Club (AKC).
Toy dogs are by definition small, but pressure from buyers is pushing breeders to downsize still further by bringing together the tiniest breeding couples they can find to produce what have become known as "teacup" size offspring.
"When I first got him, he was two months old and could fit on my palm," Chan said of Bibi, a miniature Pomeranian. Now two years old, Bibi still weighs in at a featherweight 2kg.
"People want something to take care of," Chan said by way of explaining the craze for the pets.
"A small dog is perfect because it's like a toy that you can carry everywhere, take out to play, and then, when you don't want it, put it back in the bag," she said.
For the busy owner like Chan -- a financial analyst -- smaller dogs also equal smaller effort.
"Because I work very long hours, I don't want to walk a dog everyday," she said. "Small dogs, they can just play in the house, and then they are happy."
Chan takes her canine companion everywhere -- to the restaurant, the department store and even the office and the movie theater.
"I leave him in the bag. He's very well trained. ... He understands it's not proper to bark," she said.
Admirers, who are legion according to Chan, call him Little Prince "because he's very pretty." But royalty comes at a price, and a pet like Bibi costs US$1,800 to tuck under your arm.
At Rosenthal's store, dogs go for anywhere between US$500 and US$5,000, with "teacup" sizes among the most sought after.
According to New York ma-gazine, hotel heiress Paris Hilton recently handed her well-known chihuahua, Tinkerbell, over to her mother's care because the tiny dog had literally outgrown its welcome.
Paris "only likes them when they're very small, and Tinkerbell got too big," the magazine cited a friend of Hilton's as saying.
In May, a New York woman received US$1,000 in damages from a dog store after the
Maltese she purchased -- on the understanding that it would ne-ver exceed 2kg -- inexplicably ballooned to a horrifyingly unfashionable 4kg.
"We can't absolutely guess [the weight]," said Rosenthal. "We can only go by the parents and the breeders."
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