Hi everyone! When I first got Ruby and was posting photos of her teeny-tiny, chubby-puppy self all over Facebook a lot of people started saying she didn't look like a purebred, one of the reasons being that she was too big.

(That's her and my dad when she was 7 weeks old). She does seem to photograph huge though, does anyone else find that happens with their chi's?

I think a lot of people think chi's only come in "teacup" size. So I found this pic online to show people that wasn't the case.

Now I'm curious as to what sort of weight range each classification would have and where Ruby would fit. At 8 months now, she is 3kg (which I think is about 6.6lb). Also, she has been this weight for the last two or so months, has she stopped growing or will she have another little spurt in the future?


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There are not any weight classifications, there is also no such thing as a teacup chi. Chihuahuas who meet the breed standard should be 3-6lbs. I have a rescue who is 8lbs. Not all chi's are bred to standard, you will see a lot of chi's tinier and larger than the 3-6 lb range.


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Frame wise they seem to stop growing around the 7-8 month mark.. but this depends on your lines, They do however continue to bulk up and fill out and gain coat (long coats) until around 18 mos. Visually she probably won't get much bigger, but she may end up weighing more. Weights are funny.. you can have a long lanky Chi that's 2.5 pounds and a tiny little dot who weighs 4-5 pounds, so don't put much value in overall weight vs size. I hope that helps some?

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In your Dad's , she looks just about the same size Ike did at 7 weeks in my husband's hands. I'll try to find that picture. Ike is only 4 mths and 3 wks old , so I 'll have to wait and see how he turns out. His mother is 5 pounds and father is 4 pounds. Tea cups are usually the runts of the littler and the breeders call them tea cup, to get more money. I think Ruby looks perfect!

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Ike born Aug 15 2012

Thanks everyone! I do remember reading somewhere that breeders will call a runt puppy "teacup" an can sell them to people who don't know any better for more money. Dodgy practice, but at least the little runts are going to be loved and looked after unlike in other breeds where I have heard the runts are put down.

I think Ruby is perfect too! We've never met another chi though so I was curious as to how she'd measure up. My cousin has a chi-Pom mix that i have seen in photos but not met. She's a few months older than Ruby and about 2kg. She's also curiously the only one of the little that doesn't have the fluffy Pom fur. Until my cousin told me she was half Pom I would have thought she was purebred.


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Not to split hairs but not all "teacup" sized dogs (and of course we all know it's not a real breed standard, but a descriptive phrase used by many none the less) are runts, some smaller than usual dogs will have larger birthweights than their litter mates who end up bigger than them! Some dogs are genetically tiny. Very often runts grow to be average sized dogs in the end.

The reality of all this though is yes, many breeders charge more for smaller dogs, and you won't really technically know what you're dealing with size wise until the dog is past 6 mos of age. That's why picking the runt of a litter is usually not a good way to determine the end size of the dog, that Chihuahua chart is pretty whacky too!

That is pretty much what I learned by researching and talking to people who owned smaller than average Chihuahua's and of course my own experience with my own dogs.

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Here is Ike, in his Daddy's hands the day we got him at 7 weeks.

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Ike born Aug 15 2012