Nevermind this post

I will say IF you are looking for a Biewer, go to a reputable breeder such as Deb. She knows the lines, and which ones to look out for. She understands the lineage of the main breeders because she has taken the time and done her homework. She knows what dogs should not be paired with what lines and what's going to happen when they are. She does the required testing on her breeding pairs prior to ever breeding with them and the pups before they are sold. She goes to shows for an "unbiased" eye of what she produces.. she stands behind her dogs.. oh that all could say as much.

So if you decide on a Biewer, go to someone who knows what they are doing.. it is well worth it and you will be glad you did if/when trouble sets in.

Diana :animal-pa

I am not much for "papers" with my pups, infact, It is not one iota a consideration when getting a pup. My Biewers are siblings, there were 3 in the litter and my secretary has the "runt" who looks nothing like my two and is quite frankly a spitting image of what the perfect Biewer "should" look like.

I recently moved and still have packed away her papers, as silly as it is I get too emotional still, but I will try to find them soon (I am finishing unpacking). I did give a copy of the papers to someone here and if she wants to answer this for me that is fine, I don't mind. I don't recall anything regarding the lines aside from I think "Teddy Bear" something, I think!

:thumbup::thumbup::thumbup: I'm so glad we agree!! I reserved one of Deb's furbaby's already. I'm so excited & giddy!!

Tracey

Hi Lynzy, I'm sorry if I reopened a wound. This question was more related to general curiosity about the health of Biewers rather than their origins. Take your time, and do the things you need to do for yourself first.

Stick close to Deb... there is a ton you can learn from her if you want to really learn about the Biewers.

Diana :animal-pa

I do know their parents were both from Germany.

I agree the price for Biewers is no different. Actually when I was originally started looking for a Yorkie. I found one from a reputable YTCA breeder was charging me for a pet quality Yorkie that I could have got a show quality Biewer. Makes you wonder. I saw a Biewer, I was in love. I love my Biewer. I would not trade him in for anything. And people like Deb are working hard to be the best reputable Biewer Breeder.

ICKC, a show venue that some people on this thread show through, recognizes Biewers, Yorkies, Golddust and Biros to be shown as separate breeds yet I see on some peoples websites that these dogs are coming out of the same litter! How is that possible, litter mates but different breeds??? Very credible I see.

Okay, I've formed my opinion on whether Biewers are a separate breed from Yorkshire Terriers based on the information I currently have. It could change based on new research, so it isn't set in stone, but here it is:

Based on the results of breed purity analysis conducted by MARS Labs, I can only conclude that the 100 Biewers that were tested do indeed contain DNA from other breeds of dogs. And the PCA analyses conducted by MARS Labs indicate that these Biewers are fairly uniform, and cluster in their own group separate from Yorkshire Terriers. To me, that meets the definition of a separate breed, but ultimately it's the AKC and other registries who will have to make that decision.

How these other breeds got mixed in Yorkshire Terriers to create the Biewer Terrier is somewhat a mystery to me (perhaps falsified pedigree records in the distant past or "oops" matings, but I am not going to point fingers because those people are long gone and we have no real way of knowing), but the DNA evidence is there, and it is very strong. For me, the smoking gun is the piebald spotting gene (MITF gene) on chromosome 20. This isn't a simple random mutation that can spontaneously occur over and over, but appears to have originated once during the domestication of dogs, and been transferred to the breeds with piebald spotting by crossbreeding and selection. In the breeds analyzed so far, all piebald spotting genes carry a unique DNA insertion called a SINE in the upstream regulatory region of the MITF gene (the part of the DNA that controls the expression of the MITF gene--where and when the gene will be expressed during the dog's growth and development) as well as a separate length polymorphism (segment of DNA that can vary in length) in the upstream regulatory region. The chances against both changes occurring at once spontaneously in a single Yorkshire Terrier are astronomical. My conclusion is that the piebald spotting gene had to have been bred in from another breed of dog during the development of the Biewer Terrier. The way to resolve this question once and for all would be to completely sequence the upstream regulatory regions of the MITF gene in Biewers and see whether it indeed carries the SINE and the length polymorphism. If it does, then it's a done deal as far as I am concerned that the Biewer arose from breeding a Yorkshire Terrier with another breed and re-extracing the piebald color gene.

Since I am a believer in the conservation of genetic resources, my recommendation is that Biewers be bred only with other Biewers in order to preserve their unique characteristics, which go beyond color, but also include behavioral differences. If you keep crossing Biewers back to Yorkshire Terriers, you are going to lose these unique characteristics, and end up with something more like a Yorkshire Terrier, but yet will never quite be a Yorkshire Terrier.

Okay, I'm stepping down off my soapbox now. If you disagree, it's all good, but please be kind and don't shoot the messenger. Thanks!

Pstinard, this is great stuff your giving us and I hope you stick around...education like this is priceless!

There is some controversy about other breeds potentially being mixed in by Mr. Biewer. I think it's the Maltese. But that suggestion has been disputed by many people.

In any event, I agree that crossing the Biewer back with the Yorkshire Terrier would water down the Biewer characteristics. I know many here are vocally against Biewer to Biewer breedings but I think it's the only way to preserve the Biewer breed as a distinct breed.

Thanks for your analysis. Tracey

Thanks, Lynzy and Tracey! I'm trying to stay out of the controversy of how it happened, and just report what I think is there to the best of my knowledge.

I understand everything except the piebald gene explanation. How do you explain how the parti yorkie got the piebald gene also and why are they considered yorkies if biewers arent

Well.. that is your opinion and you are of course free to have it. And, based on the knowledge you have been able to gather I can see where you could come to that conclusion.

How do you account however for the exact same gene being in the Parti Yorkshire Terrier (in the states).. actually being documented prior to Heir Biewers pup? The yorkies in the states are producing and have produced the same Piebald gene without being bred with the Biewer or any other "mixes".. they have been DNA'd to be pure Yorkshire Terrier by the AKC. Generations of yorkies have been tested by a reputable lab for DNA parentage from a very well know yorkie breeder.

Now, if this can happen in the States with full pure bred yorkies, why does it have to be a different story with the German yorkies? Do you not think that if what the MARS lab said was really in the makeup of these Biewers (they only go back three generations) We would see some throw backs to some of the these dogs??

You stated in one of your posts that you believed that breeding back to the yorkie was a recent event.. far from it. What is recent is NOT breeding back to the yorkie. It is only within the last few years that people have decided NOT to breed back to yorkies and breed Biewer to Biewer only. (One club here in the states has always stated Biewer to Biewer only) In Germany, the country of origin, they have always bred back to yorkies, many breeders still do. Within one litter you have both yorkies and Biewers and they are registered by color into what breed they are. You can also have GoldDust and many other "colors" that are considered separate BREEDS! ooh so simple! But my point is breeding back to the yorkie is NOT a new thing at all, it was ALWAYS done, it had to be, and in my opinion it still should be.

Now, back to the MARS test.. IF the test had used a cross section of Biewers to get the markers against which all of the dogs were to be measured maybe the testing would have some validity.. However,. this was not the case. The dogs used to create the marker were from one group of people, one specific group of dogs. The samples were "submitted" by someone claiming to be a vet (who was not). Tainted test, tainted results FOREVER! Unless and until they totally start over collecting the information to get a good base.. that test is meaningless. MARS themselves have stated over and over again that this test, if taken for dogs from small populations and animals or dogs not bred in the US is note accurate.. if you look in the YT archives , I'm sure you'll find the letter from the MARS people stating such.

OK.. there, My opinion and a few questions too I guess :) .. always more questions than answers!

Diana:animal-pa

Oh dear, I don't want to create more controversy, but I think that Parti-Yorkies got their piebald gene in the same way that Biewers did--by crossing in from another breed. BUT, I have read absolutely nothing about DNA breed testing of Parti Yorkies, so I don't have as much data to go on as I do for Biewers--the evidence is much more clear in Biewers. It would be great to sequence the MITF (piebald) gene in Parti Yorkies too, just to try to get an idea of what is going on. I am willing to keep an open mind. We simply need more data.

The DNA study done by AKC tested males and females were not DNA'd. The dogs used in the MARS testing focus group were mostly dogs with direct German ancestry and many of the dogs registered to other Biewer clubs are siblings to these dogs. The BTCA has had many people come to them from other US registries and ask if they can MARS test their dogs and go from the current registry to BTRA. Some have tested as Biewer Terriers and were allowed entry while others tested as Yorke/Biewer crosses and Yorkie/maltese. Some in fact came back as Yorkie/Shih-tzu mixes. The other US clubs have not tested their dogs therefore have not been able to remove these mixes from their breeding programs thus leading to these results.

Ahhh, you're in the THICK of it all right!!:D

Someone also mentioned potential mix with s**tzu or Maltese. I don't remember which one that Mr. Biewer also bred - it was one of those 2.

Someone else also mentioned a re-do of the testing since the 100 samples originally submitted by G.Pruett & company may be tainted. That would be the right thing to do. Certainly there are enough Biewers to test.

Perhaps people are too afraid to do that now. Maybe breeders don't want to know the complete & messy history as it relates to their lines.

In any event, it's my opinion that there's been sufficient breedings of the Biewer for it to be considered a distinct breed. IMHO, there's no reason to breed back to the Yorkie. It doesn't bother me in the least that some other breed was mixed in early on to create the Biewer.

Don't all dogs descend from wolves anyway? At some point, all breeds were mixed with something else - save the dogs that were created in the Book of Genesis (I guess they just popped up out of nowhere after there was light & earth.:rolleyes:)

Tracey

Hi Diana, I appreciate the controversies surrounding this issue--they are very complex indeed. I answered the Parti question in another post. But if Partis are testing as purebred Yorkshire Terriers, one explanation could be that they have been crossed for so many generations back to Yorkshire Terriers that traces of other breeds are being diluted out by Yorkie DNA. That's one possibility. Since I haven't seen any Parti test results with my own eyes, and since Partis have not been subjected to as much analysis by MARS as Biewers, I don't have enough information to draw any firm conclusions. Sequencing the MITF gene in Partis would help a lot in answering this question. With respect to AKC DNA testing, they only do parentage testing, not breed purity testing, and I'm certain that their parentage testing does not predate the appearance of the first Parti Yorkies. If you have any information to the contrary, let me know!

You have a good point about German Yorkies, but my understanding is that pedigree records for them is not as good as in the United States. And again, there was no DNA testing back in the days of Mr. Biewer.

About Biewer to Yorkie breeding, once that is stopped, and you start breeding Biewer to Biewer, the gene pool becomes fixed and the breed stops becoming more and more Yorkie-like. That would explain the MARS results showing that the Biewers they tested were in a unique and uniform group.

About the Biewers that were tested by MARS, yes those mostly came from one club. I don't know whether the person who submitted the DNA samples claimed to be a vet or not, but it doesn't matter, because DNA doesn't lie. If someone has serious issues about the validity of the samples, they should ask for them to be retaken and retested, but I'm sure the results would be the same. I agree that it would be great to test all Biewers from all clubs, but since that might include Biewers coming from Biewer by Yorkie crosses, that would basically be like throwing mixed breed dogs into a purebred test--the results would be interesting, but they wouldn't be informative or normative. I understand that there is some kind of turf war going on with respect to which clubs have the "true and authentic Biewers." I would recommend that all of the clubs doing Biewer by Biewer matings get together, submit their dogs' DNA for analysis, go over the results together, and try to reach some kind of consensus.

Oh, I forgot to mention that if you are getting a lot of different colored "Yorkies" (and I use the term loosely) from ONE litter, that is clearly a sign that breed standards for the Yorkshire Terrier are being ignored and flaunted, and people have been crossing Dog knows who to Dog knows what. Each color is not a separate breed--it's a sign of breeders gone wild.

:thumbup::thumbup::thumbup: Yay! IMHO, the ANSWER has arrived!!:D

The demise of the Yorkshire Terrier! It's not just color; some of them don't even structurally LOOK like the standard any more. It's a travesty.

There is no turf war.. all of the Biewers came from the place.. they are all the same dogs.

Here is the history of the Parti DNA testing as taken from Deb Mullins site:

snowblueyorkies.com

The Tri- color had been showing up in litters from Ashley since 1984 and Nikkos Kennel had been quietly placing them in pet homes and asking people not to say where they got them.
Crownridge and Summit had obtained Parti colored puppies from Nikkos kennels and wanted them AKC registered with their true parti-colors . So in 1999 they convinced Nikkos Kennel to go to AKC and get them registered as yorkshire terriers parti color.

This turned out to be a very lengthy and costly process to Mrs. Lipman,(Nikko's Kennels) as AKC shut down her kennel in 1999 for 18 months to conduct DNA studies of 42 litters sires and dams. She was not allowed to breed or sell or conduct any business during this time.

3 of the dogs tested were owned by Mrs Bogren(Crownridge) and 1 owned by Mrs Gesmundo(Summit Yorkies)

During this study AKC also spoke to several other breeders about tri colored pups born in other bloodlines.

Many highly respected breeders admitted they occasionally had these tri colored pups born.

AKC went back as far as they could with the living dogs. They DNA'd about 42 litters. They also talked to a lot of the "old" breeders and they told them they had always been in the lines but were disposed of.

In June of 2000. The DNA studies of Nikko’s Kennel was completed to the satisfaction of AKC.

AKC deciding that after a study of the Yorkshire History and the DNA of the dogs involved in the study they were satisfied that the color can be produced in otherwise normal litters of Yorkshire Terriers.


Hope that helps you..

Diana :animal-pa

Please, someone help me find a way out! I got hair in my eyes!

I've seen Biewer breeder websites where the breeders are posting the results of their MARS testing of new dogs, and they are still testing as Biewers, so there must have been enough legitimate samples in the original study, but if there are any valid reasons to retest (other than he-says, she-says), then MARS could try retesting at least a sample of the questioned dogs just to be sure they are legitimate.

I agree with you on all the rest.

Well, it's an "inside" determination. AKC & breeders exist with & for each other. It's a symbiotic relationship. I could easily poke holes in this version of events - but I won't do that.

Let's just say that without the RAW DNA results, AKC's findings MAY be suspect - even just a little bit?? Or are we all going on blind faith here?

So true so true! Especially with these goldust and Biro dogs...such a shame, the yorkie is being ruined.

Hi Diana, I'm glad the AKC is satisfied that the Parti color can be produced in otherwise normal litters of Yorkshire Terriers, because I sure am not. Old records can be falsified, and the Parti color predates the era of DNA testing. And as I said in another post, if the trait did come from another breed and was crossed in to breed standard Yorkshire Terriers for generation after generation, eventually the sign of the evil deed is doing to disappear. In order for my curiosity to be satisfied, I would need to see a DNA breed analysis test done on as many Partis as possible, and I would like to see the MITF (piebald) gene and its upstream regulatory DNA sequenced. I'm a show-me kind of guy.

Here is an explanation of the Parti-Color from another Yorkie Breeder

Goldenray Genetics Party Yorkies Parti Color and Biewer Colors Genetic Studies

:thumbup::thumbup: Great article! To relate to what I was talking about above, the "S" gene described in the article is the normal, functional MITF gene (found in breed standard Yorkshire Terriers), and the piebald gene is a mutant form of the MITF gene that is now known to have two unique mutations (a SINE DNA insertion, and a length polymorphism) in its regulatory region.

I found the article interesting as well and very easy to understand. It seems to me that the Biewer standard still has significant coloring on the back & head, which would suggest the mix with one other breed. I wonder whether it could be determined which one is the culprit?

I know that Mr. Biewer had other breed dogs. Could DNA determine which breed supplied pie-bald gene?

I have seen all white & other lighter colored partis - which I guess would mean a mix with more than one breed.

There are really good & ethical breeders out there. There are also the GREEDERS, however, who breed everything under the sun. I can see very easily how other breeds could be mixed in - even on purpose - to obtain a desired look.

Thanks again. Keep the information coming!:)

Tracey