She sang, she danced, and she was a wee bit eccentric, especially for the early 1900s. Still, that she came from a long line of vaudevillians and was one herself probably explained much to casual acquaintances. Show people, you know. Her name was Rosina Casselli, and while serious Chihuahua fanciers may recall her name as a contributor to E. Ruth Terry’s book, The Complete Chihuahua, historians of the early entertainment industry may have come across her name and her act involving an entire troupe of trained Chihuahuas.

In those days, the breed was still exotic, and audiences were likely gobsmacked that a dog could be so small. Casselli made the most of it. She hyped the Chihuahua’s mysterious origins, and as the terrific dog writer, Amy Fernandez, wrote in an article in 2013, Casselli routinely told reporters that she, herself, captured the dogs as they emerged out of underground burrows. She not only tamed them, but trained them into being the fabulous performers seen by audiences.

French born, Casselli claimed to have invented tiny motor cars for her animal acts as evidenced by an ad she put in Variety in 1908.  In 1909, she performed in New Zealand under the headline, “Rosina Casselli and Her Midget Wonders.” Of her show, a reviewer wrote: “Her troupe of midget chihuahua dogs, natives of Mexico, were beautiful animals which appeared to have the intelligence of human beings. They were driven on stage in a pretty motor-car by a smart little canine, which acted the chauffeur to perfection. Upon arrival, the troupe sprang to the ground, and the driver gave utterance to a joyous little bark, and steered his car off again.

“The midgets then to set to work. Their feats included seemingly impossible performances on horizontal bars, perpendicular rods, the trapeze, and other apparatus. Dogs sprang from bar to bar cleverly, just as a human gymnast might do, did wonders on the trapeze, hanging singly and in couples, turned somersaults, and exhibited innumerable showy tricks, some of them designed with a spice of humour which the quadrupeds seemed to appreciate.

“At the conclusion of the turn, the motor-car arrived, the chauffeur barked, and they sprang on board. A diverting altercation took place between a pair of beauties for one of the seats. Shortly afterwards, an explosion was heard, and presently, walking on its hind legs, came a solitary chihuahua. He was followed by the car, drawn by one of the other dogs, the accident causing a most amusing scene.”

In 1915, she and her dogs performed at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco, the event from which the photo at the top comes. In essence a world’s fair, the expo covered over 600 acres and stretched along two and a half miles of waterfront property. It not only showed off San Francisco’s grandeur, it celebrated a great American achievement, the successful completion of the Panama Canal. By then, Casselli was a world traveler having also performed in London, New York, ports in Australia, New Zealand and South Africa.

We don’t know what became of Casselli, but we came across a curious clipping that reported Casselli having settled in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida with her foster brother, W. L. Vanoli, and it is here that she died, possibly in 1953.