This week, The New York Times Style section discovers yappy dogs. "There's a bull market in bad dogs right now," reports Bob Morris, who goes on to compile a compendium of terrible stories about rich people's obnoxious dogs. A sample:

Dogs in banks. Dogs in yoga classes. Dogs in wedding parties. They have even invaded luxury boutiques. At the Manhattan offices of Marchesa, the delicate gown line designed by Georgina Chapman and Keren Craig, office dogs are known to get into savage fights. "Sometimes it's funny, but other times it can get pretty violent," said Edward Chapman, the company's president, whose Yorkshire terrier, Lottie, is often the instigator.

The pit bull of Theodore Roosevelt was known for ripping the pants off a French ambassador.

Paris Hilton's Tinkerbell was known to snap and bite.

Samantha Ronson, the celebrity D.J. and former girlfriend of Lindsay Lohan, was mortified last year when the news media learned that her bulldog, Cadillac, had attacked and killed a tiny Maltese at her West Hollywood apartment building.

Our dogs are going to the dogs! Good thing we remove their reproductive organs as a matter of course, otherwise they'd reproduce to overabundance and roam the planet in nomadic warrior tribes, pillaging and peeing on carpets at will. If cats took over the world, they'd do it with strategy and cunning; if dogs took over, it'd be by the brute force of ten thousand Yorkies yapping us to death. [NYT, image of Paris and Tinkerbell via Bauer-Griffin]