Woogie Man,
I know
that the "black" coloring doesn't come from the Maltese but for some reason when I breed my little Yorkie sire that tends to have the "Morkie look" that I prefer , to this one little mom, I get more "black" puppies. So there is something about the combination of this particular Maltese and Yorkie that seems to take this " black coloring" more so - then the combination of this sire with a few of my other Maltese moms. These little black babies have been beautiful, averaging around 5 lbs and having very nice little baby doll faces, and I have found great homes for them, but they are not what I am wanting, personally. I could probably try a different male to see if this mom will have more black puppies with a different male - but I really don't want to do that - she has very nice purebred Maltese, so I don't want to just continue to breed a mom that I don't think will have the looks I am trying for - even though I'm sure it would be very interesting to see what would happen.
As far as the mixing of the purebred dogs getting the health problems of each of the breeds. The vast majority of the genetic / congenital problems you have listed are "recessive" genes. You have to have two "recessive" genes for the puppy to have this problem. Breeding the purebred dog makes it much more likely to have these problems in a puppy. The most perfect of the dogs was the first dog that had all the genes - which is the wolf - but the continual decreasing of the genes to get our little (or big) purebred dogs, we have caused these problems that each breed is now known for. That is why you have to be sooooo careful breeding purebred dogs - they are prone to more problems. We all know that each bread - as was shown in the previous post - has their own set of problems. I am afraid we will have even more of these "Yorkie problems" as people are continuing to reduce the gene pool even more by trying to make the Yorkies even smaller. But, when you breed the two different breeds together, you increase the gene pool and the lower the chances that you will have the recessive gene in the hybrid that causes the problem in the purebred dog. Of course this will not guarantee 100% that you will not have the problem, but it does reduce the chance for the genetic / congenital problem. For those who do decide to raise the hybrid dogs, they can work to continue to reduce the probability of "purebred related health problems" while still being able to have a dog that you can know some of the temperament. It would be silly to think this is true (knowing the personality) when breeding just any two purebred dogs, but the Yorkies and the Maltese have some very similar traits and seem to be more predictable in the outcome. Of course there is always the puppy that will not conform
whether purebred or not.
I'm not encouraging anyone to breed hybrid puppies - Anyone that gets either a purebred or a hybrid just needs to do their research to make sure they get the right puppy / dog for their family.
As far as the "nasty" e-mail sent to me - I did not answer her by e-mail. I decided I would answer here instead. I continue to hope that we can discuss and even disagree without ugliness. We are all different and it is good we have opinions. We can learn from those that both agree and that disagree with us.
