[yorkietalkjilly]

Pretty sure I've shared this story before but years back, my first little Yorkie was a mere 3 lb. tiny Yorkie. He was the first Yorkie puppy I had ever seen and knowing nothing about the horrors of breeding tiny dogs, I fell for him at first sight, brought him home. He was my own personal dog, gravitated to me over others and other dogs in the family and spent every moment w/me. We were best buds and I was totally besotted with him. He loved to share his toys and involve me with them, which I found touching.

One Saturday morning I was sleeping in and saw my ltiny ittle love standing in the bedroom doorway with what seemed like a rose or flower with a stem in his mouth, holding the bloom in his mouth while the stem trailed down. I idly wondered where he'd gotten a flower but was still drousy and went back to a half-sleep. Scotty spritely jumped up onto his little stool, then onto the bed and spent some time playing with his 'rose' at the foot of the bed, then jumped down again and left it on the bedroom floor to go play with my son and his own dog toys in the den.

Later, when I got up, I could see to my horror that the "rose" was not a flower by any stretch but what looked like a half-headed mouse, a very tiny one and it was partly under the edge of the dust ruffle. I didn't have my driving glasses on so I didn't get a good look at it(thankfully!) and when I saw what I thought it was I ran screeching into the den. I'm horrified of creepy crawlies, probably a full-fledged phobic. My sweet teenage son took cares of the "problem" for me as he hadn't seen what Scotty had been playing with all morning and of course, being a boy, was very matter of fact about it all once he did know.

We cleaned the floors throughout the house, washed the bedclothes and bathed Scotty, brushed his teeth and for several whole days I just couldn't cuddle him or let him kiss me! Yuck! I was horrified, called the exterminator and of course we haven't ever had another mouse in all these years but my dear little Yorkie was doing his job, keeping his house safe from critters and dispatched it, which Yorkies were bred to do. Horrible as the story is, from Scotty's point of view, when he brought his 'trophy' down to my bedroom he was obviously proudly showing off his trophy prey to me and then left it for me to 'appreciate' that he'd done his job.

From then on I realized that even the tiniest Yorkies is still 100% dog, a full blown Yorkshire Terrier breed, developed /bred to hunt, catch and kill small prey, no matter how sweet, dainty and precious they might look and act otherwise .

Took me a year to get over the yuckiness of that episode and accept that if I was going to have a terrier in my home, I had to be mature enough somehow to tolerate that strong prey drive and all that that implies. What shocked me was my tiny 3 lb. fully grown Yorkie did what he did. He seemed to small to kill anything! I was strangely proud of him but always seriously inspected anything he wanted to bring to me from then on!!!!!!! And Scotty, being the sweetheart he always had been, was intuitive enough to sense my apprehension(especially those first few weeks after the 'event') and after that seemed to take extra pains to stop and show me what he had for me B4 just jumping up on the couch or bed and sense my relief each time that I saw it was merely a toy or stick or whatever before coming to me with it. He'd come excitedly racing to me with his find, slide to a stop, look at me with his head cocked to one side in a questioning look as it to ask for permission to come ahead, sense a lack of recoil and come ahead! This was nothing I wittingly taught him but appreciated more than you can ever know!!!

I guess that's just one of the reasons I adore this breed so much - their ability to analyze us so effortlessly and learn on the job so to speak. They just kind of mold themselves to your sensibilities with what seems total lack of effort.