Tiny yappy dogs have taken over the streets of a small town in Arizona, chasing young children while their parents apparently cower inside, frantically redialing 311 — Maryvale Animal Control received more than 6,000 calls in the last year alone.

Turns out these lap dogs aren't just for decoration: a three-year-old Chihuahua named Bell helped locate three missing girls who had gotten lost in the woods.

In bizarro Pennsylvania news, over 200 chihuahuas were seized from a home in Benton on Thursday. Obviously some horrifically strange person lived there, but this is sort of a sad case – as opposed to just being weird – because many of the dogs were sick or already dead. The surviving dogs will all be in animal shelters by Friday, where they'll be treated by veterinarians and, if deemed healthy/sane enough, put up for adoption. Mike Pechart, who oversees dog law enforcement at the Pennsylvania Agriculture Department, hit the nail on the head when he described the situation as, "an unfortunate situation of animal hoarding."

Shortly before thoroughbred horses stormed the track at the Kentucky Derby, a cavalcade of chihuahuas ran in Chandler, Arizona's annual Cinco de Mayo Festival and Chihuahua Races.

"After shopping at Whole Foods on Houston Street, a Manhattan artist returned to his [Porsche Cayenne] SUV to find the window smashed and both his laptop and lapdog missing from the back seat."

Two weeks after shooting a home invader dead with a pink .38-caliber gun, Florida beauty queen Meghan Brown is ready to cash in. The Daily reports that, in the days immediately after the shooting, Meghan "modeled thigh-high stockings and a black corset laced up with a hot pink ribbon—all while aiming a shiny pistol." Why, you ask?

A mysterious woman brought two car loads of chihuahuas to a local shelter, abandoning a total of 43 chihuahuas in 24 hours. Did a Canadian pet shelter just save 43 puppies from the Cruella De Vil of chihuahuas?

They waited outside the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals headquarters on E. 92nd St. with pure hearts: They were there to adopt chihuahuas. But there were 150 people and only 15 chihuahuas. Things got weird.

The first batch of homeless Chihuahuas will be arriving in New York from Los Angeles today. (As you may recall, Paris Hilton's fascination with the breed a few years back led a big bunch of California residents to adopt Chihuahuas, but many of them were abandoned when the fad passed.) As part of "Operation Chichuahua Airlift," about 15 dogs will be landing at JFK today aboard a Virgin America flight. Why NYC? According to the ASPCA, "the East Coast has long had a shortage of small dogs." [AP, ABC News, previously]

California has a Chihuahua problem. Shelters there have been overwhelmed by the breed and few people are interested in adopting them, so animal welfare groups are now planning to fly a big bunch of them to New York since they're still popular here. (That's probably because it's the only kind of dog that fits in most NYC apartments.) But why is California teeming with Chihuahuas in the first place? It's all Paris Hilton's fault: "Experts blame the unexpected rise in abandoned California Chihuahuas partly on fans who hoped to emulate celebs like Paris Hilton, who carries one in her handbag, but later became bored with the little creatures and abandoned them." [NYDN]

[via Adfreak]