[topknot]

We hear from the old timers - the blue should look like the shade of the inside of a gun barrel. This help upi get a picture in your mind of the blue. With yorkies there are many shades that they can actually come up with due to their genetics. Some adult yorkies are very silver and some are very dark, even black and never turn. Some yorkies change to the blue very slowly and others can show breaking before 6 months, predicting a light blue to silver coat. I like to see them breaking at 6 months under the front shoulder first. Females will often continue to lighten over years, due to their hormones, where males dent to hold on to thier color longer. This is one reason why yorkies are so hard to predict if they will be the right color to show. We have to wait a long time to see how they are breaking. One can also look at the tone of the skin color - pink usually means they will be lighter and a blue to the skin tone means darker coat. Think of the hair shoot (follicile) as an empty tunnel like optic tubes and the color they project from the follicile with be determined by their skin tone.