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Originally Posted by Tuffy  Thanks a lot everybody! This is really helping. Our neighbor knows of a breeder who, after her female Yorkie has had 4 litters, will give away the mother for free. If I get a Yorkie, I'll probably take one of the mothers who will be around 5 or 6 years old. I just have a few more specific questions:
How much do the yap? I've met several Yorkies, but never once have I heard them yap, but everywhere people are telling me that they do it constantly.
Are the older ones (6 years +) still active, or do they just turn into a pile of slush? I don't want them to be puppy-like or anything, but I don't want them to be lazy either.
And, believe me, there will be more questions later. Again, thanks so much!!  |
Quit being so nice and smart. It's hard to try to talk you out of it if you're doing all the research that you're supposed to do!
I have two Yorkies, an 11-year-old rescue I've owned for a year and a half, and a 3-year-old that I bought as a pup. The rescue is a horrible yapper. I can't stop it. He not only yaps when people come to the door, but he yaps relentlessly in the car if he's not on my lap. He yaps when the car slows. He yaps when the car stops. I love him anyway, but I haven't been able to stop the yapping.
The 3-year-old doesn't yap at all. He barks for the reasons all dogs bark (seeing another dog, hearing an unexplained noise), but he's very under control. We shook a can filled with coins when he was a pup to deter him from unwanted barking, so maybe that helped.
As for temperment, I think all dogs are different. If a 6-year-old has been raised to be lazy, it might be hard to make him or her active again. But my 11-year-old is not lazy at all. When I come home from work, he beats my 3-year-old to the front door. When we go up a double flight of stairs, he wins that too. I walk him every day, twice a day, and he keeps up just fine.
They can mellow out, though. My 3-year-old was a terror as a pup, but now he's very evenly tempered. He can be energetic, but he's not always energetic.
Hope this helps.