Photo by Jessica Turner.
She was named Sophia Loren for her large bust, small waist and long legs. She weighed almost four pounds, and was a celebrity at Lula B’s where her owner, Pamela Robison Mullins, began renting a booth in 2019. And she attended service at Kessler Park United Methodist Church every Sunday, where she sat “quiet as a mouse.”
Sophia Loren, our neighborhood’s celebrity chihuahua, died on Jan. 7 after being hit by a vehicle on Tyler Street. She was nine years old.
“Of all the loves I have lost, the loss of Sophia Loren has by far been the most painful. She was my soul dog,” Robison Mullins said.
Robison Mullins met the tiny chihuahua while volunteering at Dallas Animal Services. Sophia Loren weighed less than two pounds and had been one of four Chihuahuas taken from a home during an animal cruelty investigation. Robison Mullins had been instructed to move Sophia Loren to a new pen at the shelter, where she would be with another dog from the same home.
“After I shut the glass door, she softly put her paw up on the glass and left it there, just looking at me. I was touched,” she said.Â
She decided if the dog was unadopted by the next day, she’d adopt her. Robison Mullins and her husband nursed Sophia Loren to her “goal weight” of 3.9 lbs, and from then on, the two were inseparable.
For years, Robison Mullins took Sophia Loren to Kessler Park United Methodist Church where she was the celebrity of greeting time. During one Sunday, a fellow church member commented that Sophia Loren’s outfit was the same as what she’d been dressed in the week before.Â
“I couldn’t have that,” Robison Mullins said. “I started purchasing and sewing her clothes, necklaces, making her hats and painting her fingernails red or pink. I made costumes for her too. At the end of her life, she had over 40 outfits, 25 hats, and several necklaces.”
In 2019, Sophia Loren began visiting Lula B’s Antique Mall alongside Robison Mullins on Saturdays. Her notoriety at Lula B’s became so large that she was highlighted as a standout pet in the Oak Cliff Advocate’s 2021 pet edition.
“She was a unique and unusual Chihuahua because she would allow anyone to pet her or hold her, including children, as long as she could see me,” Robison Mullins said. “She never snapped at anyone. Those who needed healing sometimes cried while holding her. You could see the change come over their face.”
Sophia Loren was perhaps most famous for the time she jumped out of a birthday cake dressed in a Marylin Monroe blonde wig and red lipstick for a friend’s birthday party.
Robison Mullins said Sophia Loren had an affinity for movie nights, and her favorite film was Beverly Hills Chihuahua. It was not unusual for neighborhood kids to join the duo for pizza and popcorn nights.
“We had the best time watching (Beverly Hills Chihuahua)Â numerous times,” she said.
Robison Mullins volunteers for the Chihuahua Rescue and Transport’s Southwest division. In lieu of flowers, she asks donations be made to the rescue in Sophia Loren’s name.
