Quote:
Originally Posted by concretegurl  Am I right or wrong here...or does anyone really know?
I'm just trying to get it figured out, out of curiosity.
It's hard to figure out what is fact and what is not and honestly I'd prefer to get research from the country of origin rather than here...but either/or
That in England the Yorkie is an averaged 6-8 pounds, until recent years when it was changed 4-6 pounds, and the breed standard there is slightly larger than here?>height and weight? That previously even with downsizing of the originating breeds, Yorkies were still intended to be around 10# until the registration began and people with smaller lines had their dogs promoted as the breed standard?
So what used to be considered a "teacup" was a standard size Yorkie now here and what is called a "teapot" now was the standard prior in England? 
I think I just confused myself here!  |
Your not the only one confused
I would say most yorkies here in the uk are of the larger size as we dont very often see the under 4 pound ones here but do see a lot of yorkies lets say the size of a westie.
As far as i know kennel club breed standard is the same in the uk and usa being must not be over 7 pounds to be able to show.
Yorkies were first bred to kill rats so had to be small enough to get in to small places but big enough to kill a rat as far as i can remember up to 30 pounds when they first started breeding them, they were dogs of farmers and property owners but when the wives of the property owners saw they were cute they wanted them as cute pretty pets so the fashion changed and they were bred down in size and no longer used as ratters.
There is no proven history of where the yorkie came from but most agree they came from Huddersfield Ben who was born 1865 and died in 1871.
Some records show that yorkies were given different names back then and showing had different weight classes but none were over 12 pounds but if you ever see a painting of ben you can see he is well over 12 pounds in weight yet he was shown so its hard to know what is the truth.
Some links both with different ideas
http://www.ytca.org/history.html http://www.k9web.com/dog-faqs/breeds/yorkies.html http://searchwarp.com/swa292663.htm