The airport, the mall, the coffee shop...gazing at you from inside a Burberry bag with bulging eyes too big for its tiny face. Upon first sight, my instinct is to leap atop the table at Starbucks shrieking, "Rat! Somebody kill it!"

On second glance, I realize the critter is not a big rat donning a fashionable plaid sweater-but a dog!

A dog? In a sweater? In a coffee shop?

Sigh.

The owner thinks her little guy is adorable and she wants you to think her little Muffy Pumpkin Pie is adorable, too. Or at least as adorable as her matching Burberry scarf and belt.

I don't dislike small dogs-I just don't get it. The small dog thing. The expensive small dog in an expensive handbag thing. It's a wee bit elitist. If I can't bring my well trained 45 pound pooch into Starbucks-why should she be able to bring in a yapping Maltese?

Because it's able to fit and shit in the palm of her hand?

Discrimination!

"I think of them as a handbag with a heartbeat," Robin Bowden, vice president of Prudential Douglas Elliman in Manhattan, told the New York Times.

Yes, a handbag with a heartbeat-a shitting, stinking, barking, handbag with a heartbeat.

Bowden's comment, though at first sickening, is as true now as it was 300 years ago.

"Until the late 19th century, toy dogs were strictly the keep of the wealthy, especially royalty, where small, charming dogs that did not work for their food were pure status symbols," write the experts at Wikipedia.org.

So the decorative dog serves two purposes-

1. Companionship-it's a living creature after all-let's not forget and...

2. It's a status symbol-like that chocolate cell phone or Uggs.

Now is this so wrong? No, but it's as irritating to some as cigarette smoke is to others.

Starbucks is not the "royal court," and the lady in Burberry plaid is not Marie Antoinette. Should living things still be treated as status symbols and treated differently from their 50 pound friends?

Many argue that fur coats are wrong-but Muffy Pumpkin Pie in a $215 Burberry sweater is fine. You think I'm kidding? Click me.

"Look at how rich I am! Look at me! Look at my dog! She's wearing Burberry plaid," the dog owner screeches with her display at Starbucks.

Can you really argue that a dog found dead in designer duds died with more dignity than a mink later made into a coat? Hmmmmm? Can you?

So am I just jealous? Maybe, or maybe I am just a style conscious individual offended by crimes against fashion-which brings me back to my original question posed in my clever headline; Is dressing your dog in Burberry a fashion do or a fashion don't?

Well the fashionistas have decided and according to Mr. Blackwell-the undisputed "God of Fashion," Paris and Britney tied for worst dressed for 2006.

Final verdict- dressed up little dogs are a fashion DON'T!

Omigod! Puh-lease! The decorative dog?!? That is so 18th century!