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Our Yorkie Family

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Ollie

Chachi

Introducing our Parti Girls

Harlie

Hallie

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Circle K Yorkies

Yorkshire Terriers

50 pounds of attitude in a 5 pound package.

Although yorkies are members of the toy group, they are true terriers, brave, determined, inquisitive and energetic. The yorkie's compact size makes them ideal for apartment living and easy to carry along on outings. Although they love to go out on daily walks they can get plenty of exercise indoors. They might be small in stature, but they have large personalities and will frequently dominate even the large breeds. They are very inteligent and require a strong (human) pack leader or they will take over control of the entire household. Yorkies are extremely social and require daily interaction with their humans. For families that are gone for long periods during the day I recommend having a second small breed dog.

Because the yorkie's luxurious long silky coat is hair and not fur, they make ideal pets in homes where alergies are a concern. For low maintenance they can be kept in a puppy cut, but even in full coat, a weekly bath and brushing is generally all it takes to keep their coats looking beautiful.

According to the AKC the ideal size range for a healthy yorkie is from 4 to 7 pounds. There are breeders that breed for less than 4 pounds but that creates a very fragile dog that can easily break a leg just from jumping off of the sofa. Although they are small they are still dogs and they love to run and jump and wrestle with other dogs.
An occasional tiny puppy in a litter is normal. Responsible breeders will make sure they go to a good pet only home. Responsible Breeders will not deliberately breed for the tiny size. The same gene that makes a puppy abnormally small can also be the cause of health issues. As with abnormally small people they can have chemical imbalances that give them a shorter than normal life expectancy.

Parti Colored Yorkies

The Parti colored Yorkshire Terriers have only been recognized since the early 1980's. And have only been accepted by the AKC for about 3 years. Before that time they were either given away as pets, or perhaps even, in the earlier times, culled at birth. Parti colored yorkies are the result of breedng two traditional colored yorkies, who both happened to carry the parti color producing gene. One cannot tell by looking at a carrier that they are a carrier because most of them are traditionally colored and many are Champions.

The parti color producing gene is a recessive gene and it will not produce a parti colored offspring unless the gene is carried by both parents. However, the gene can be passed along from one parent to their offspring, completely unnoticed for many generations, only surfacng when a carrier is mated with another carrier.

Unusual traits such as this are more likely to surface in champion lines because it is not uncommon for show breeders to practice close breeding or inbreeding, of their champions, in an attempt to reproduce the desired traits found in the champion dog.

Just exactly when and where and how this parti gene became part of the Yorkshire Terrier makeup is unknown and the issue has become a great source of controversy. There is a great deal of speculation and if you research long enough you will no doubt uncover many different theories, but the truth is, they are all just theories. No one knows for sure and if someone does know, they're not telling.

The AKC DNA'd 42 litters and their parents before they were satisfied that these dogs were not mixed with another breed.

My personal belief is that parti colored yorkies have been appearing for a long long time, but no one with a champion dog would ever want to own up to it for fear of being banned from the Yorkshire Terrier Club of America (YTCA)

There are Yorkshire Terrier breeders who will argue that the parti colored yorkies are not pure yorkies and should not be registered as pure bred dogs. However these same breeders could have a traditional colored carrier, perhaps even a champion, that came from the same litter as a parti colored and they would never know that it carried the parti gene. Is it any less a yorkie if it carries two parti genes instead of one parti gene and one traditional colored gene?