Hello - Is my dog a Silky or a Yorkie?
 

Hello everyone, I'm brand new to this forum and to the Yorkie world in general. :D

Here is a little info. I have had many dogs throughout my life. After my Rottweiler passed away this past summer I knew I needed another dog. However due to where I am currently living I couldn't get a big dog again.

After lots and lots of research I decided that of all the small breeds I really liked Yorkies and I started looking at rescues and shelters first. In September I found my Alonzo (the guy in my profile picture.) I adopted him from a small dog shelter in FL, and they said he was a pure breed Yorkie. :rolleyes:

However when I took him to his second grooming the groomer told me that she was convinced he was actually a Silky!! I had never heard of Silkies but I was taking Alonzo to the vet anyway for his Rabies shot so I thought I'd ask what she thought. The vet said it is entirely possible for Alonzo to be a Silky terrier. :aimeeyork

I've done a lot of research on the internet but I still can't make up my mind. People very often come up to me in public to ask if Lonzo is a Silky and I tell them I think so but I honestly don't know for sure. :confused:

Alonzo is around 2 and a half years old. He is 11.4 lbs, and about 23 inches in length from the tips of his cropped tail to his nose. His coat is very silvery, and though I like to keep it short when it grows out it gets very curly. His ears seem to be larger than his head and they are triangular in shape. He has very long legs that he uses to jump up to three or four times his height!! :p

Personality wise I'd say he has qualities of both breeds! So I was wondering what you guys thought, do you think I have a Silky terrier or a Yorkie?

Hi and welcome to YT, glad you found us :). He looks yorkie to me. He's super CUTE!

Welcome to the site

Handsome lil guy looks like a Yorkie to me

He looks all Yorkie to me . . and a cute one too !

I would say that he is a cotton coat.

Thanks guys!! I don't really care either way he is still my baby. But it is nice to know!

May I ask, what is a cotton coat?

I do have a Silky Terrier and have studied up on them extensively. To me your baby looks very Yorkie. Some people just assume Silky just based on size, and we all know Yorkies AND Silkies come in all sizes. Welcome to YT. You'll love it here.

A cotton coat refers to the texture/feel of the hair, cottony.

Oh okay, thanks. I think Alonzo does have a cotton coat. :D

I had this same issue with my passed girl, she was big, also had long legs, ppl would ask me the same thing, even my vet thought she was a Sliky because of her size, all I could answer was her AKC papers read yorkie. As an adult she weighed in at 17 lbs. Her hair never grew longer then her front leg elbows, she had beautiful straight shiny hair, big beautiful German Shepard ears, her personality and traits were all yorkie. I have a picture of her beautiful sleek body in my album. Size does not determine breed of dog. Until I joined YT I thought I was the only person that had a jumbo yorkie. Thank you for rescuing this precious lil guy, love him for who he is, give him the life he deserves, and he does look like a yorkie to me.

LOL just when you think you know someone, I never knew you have a Silky. Please post a pick, I love that breed and don't know anyone that has one.

Agreed!!


I have only ever seen Silkys in pics and they def have longer noses and bodies than Yorkies.


My parents vet thought their Yorkie (before this latest one) was a Silky because he was 14 lbs but, in reality, he was badly bred by a BYB. I think that is normally the case i.e. Yorkies which do not conform to standard are suspected to be Silkys but a true Silky is a rare find, I think!

Really? It's my Mylee. She's an AKC, Silky Terrier. To me, she looks very very different from Yorkies. I have to tell myself though, that I have a trained eye to look for the smallest details as I grew up Livestock Judging, LOL so I get that others don't always see the minute characteristics that I see. I'll just give you a judging of her.

As far as general appearances she is a nice/excellent example of the breed. She has a beautiful silky coat that is straight and splits down the back. She is longer than she is tall, and she has very refined bone structure. All that however, cannot outweigh her faults which are genetic. AND she falls UNDER the standard of 9-11 lbs, she weighs in at just 7. You wouldn't know that she weighs like a feather though under all that hair. (Another misconception is that Silkies don't grow a beautiful coat, but they sure can!)

Now how is she different from Yorkies? Her eyes are more almond than big and round, like a Yorkie, her nose is more wedged than square coming to a point. Silkies don't normally grow a lot of longer hair around the tip of the nose and under they eyes, as is Mylee, but the OP's Alonzo's has lots of thick facial hair.

She's BEAUTIFUL and I would have never guessed her to be a Silky. From a lot of internet pics, the differences between YT and Silky's seem so obvious but the pic of your girl has totally changed my opinion i.e. I thought I could tell!!


She is gorgeous!

If I were to groom her to where her hair was parted and lying straight down her sides, and stand her in a show pose, she would be identical to the internet pics. And thanks for the compliment. She's quite the trouble. Since they came from Yorkies, and depending on what characteristics breeders are breeding for, they certainly can have strong Yorkie characteristics.

Another difference is the ears. Not the size/shape, but Silkies don't normally grow a lot of hair off the ears. Their ears look more like the just pop up out of their hair, whereas Yorkies can have quite thick, long ear hair.

After reading all the post and seeing the pics of your Silky (she is very pretty btw), I am convinced that Alonzo is a Yorkie! :D

I love him either way but I'm glad that I can tell people what kind of dog I have. :P He is a good boy. And he's very cute!!

My inability to tell the difference between breeds is only down to my ignorance .. I think your girl is breath taking..


I have always read that Silkys are amazingly intelligent but they are very difficult to obtain outside of Australia, from what I understand, just because they are not as popular as Yorkies.


Thanks for sharing those pics...she's so beautiful x

Wow Shelly I never knew but now that you point out the differences I can see them, I always thought she was beautiful and has a nice silky coat, I just did not realize she was a Silky. Thanks for taking the time to post the photos and explain the differences.

:thumbup::thumbup: He is very handsome. So glad you were able to adopt him. I hope he brings you many years of happiness.

to the OP I am sorry I should have said welcome to Yorkie Talk and congrats on adding a yorkie into your life, Alonzo is a doll. So how is life with a yorkie compared to a Rottweiler?? and thank you for giving him a new home

I personally think he looks Yorkie.

I have a 9 year old Yorkie who weighs 7 lbs and the people I got him from bought him from a Yorkie breeder and he is a purebred Yorkie.

When I took him to a groomer to get his nails trimmed they tried to tell me he was not a Yorkie and must be a silky because he didn't have enough hair on his ears to be a Yorkie. I looked at her and said "He is a pure bred Yorkie with papers." She was like "Fine, I will put him down as a Yorkie." Then she was like what does he weigh about 11 lbs. I said 7, he weighs 7 lbs and she looked at me as if I just told her that I weighed 100 lbs (I am overweight). She gave me that look like "whatever you say." I hope when she picked him up she realized how light he was. I had just had him weighed at the vet and he was 7.1 lbs.

I do think yours looks like a Yorkie though and I would just keep calling him a Yorkie. My grandmother had a 18 lb Yorkie named Muffin when I was growing up. Yorkies really do come in all sizes. Hers was a purebred and everything. All her dogs were purebred. She constantly had several little dogs at once. Mostly poodles, but occasionally a Maltese, Yorkie, Llapso, Apso, etc.

Just enjoy him and I am so glad you rescued one!

Thanks everyone.

My Rottweiler's name was Brinx and she passed away at seven years old from Lymphoma. She was my perfect angel and I really hope that one day I get to have another Rottie. I miss her everyday. :(

Growing up my family has always tried to adopt from shelters or rescues. Ironically the only dog we did not rescue was Brinx. We got her from a very reputable breeder, because we wanted to make sure that we knew where she came from.

Any other dog that my family or I have had has been a rescue. Currently my parents have adopted a 2 year old Boxer whom Alonzo HATES!! :hide2:

I don't live at my parents home anymore and because Alonzo is my doggie he lives with me but when we go to visit Alonzo has a very hard time with Baxter (the Boxer) and I know I'm biased but it is mostly Baxter's fault.
To be fair though Alonzo would rather ignore most other dogs after the initial meeting. Is that a common Yorkie trait?

The day I rescued Alonzo I had almost given up on finding a dog I liked in a shelter or rescue. I had already been to five other places and someone suggested Craigslist but I didn't (and still don't) think I would want a dog from CL.

It's actually divine intervention or something that I ended up with Alonzo. To be honest I didn't even see him first my mother did. She pointed him out to me but I wasn't interested. We were about to leave when something caused me to go back and have another look at the purebred Yorkie that someone had left behind. I asked the staff what his story was and they didn't know much only that this was his second time at their rescue after he had been adopted for less than a month by a couple who worried about the safety of their baby with him. And they could tell me nothing about where he had been before that.

I asked to meet him, and he was such a gentleman! (Which was all an act, his whole personality that day was fake, the little bugger.) I really liked him and I told the volunteers that I was taking him. They couldn't even track down all the paperwork for Alonzo because he had only been with them for twelve hours! I was given his old vet records from before he was adopted by the couple and advised that I should get him looked over again (which I did the next day.)

Sorry for such a long post. :crazy: I love Alonzo so much. He brings me so much happiness. Even with some of his neurosis! (Like his fear of being outside, which I try to ignore but it makes walking him difficult!) He is different from any dog I've ever had before but I'm not surprised by that no two dogs are ever the same.

lol, yep, he's a yorkie lol, they all act innocent, till you get them home, then they do the 360 on you, yep, he's a yorkie all right lol, if he isn't already, soon he'll be the BOSS in your life lol.

I was going to say exactly that! He knew how to act so you would take him home, but then you get him home and their true personality comes out, but they steal your heart in the process.

My Yorkie is my best friend. I take him almost everywhere I go. He does not like my mother's boxer and mostly ignores her s**tz Tzu/Yorkie mix. Mine doesn't fight with other dogs, but he mostly just ignores them. He gets along great with my setter though as both of them are just laid back and don't really care what the other one is doing.

lol Alonzo has totally stolen my heart even though he sometimes drives me crazy he is just so cute!

I take him with me everywhere I go also, he has flown with me quite a few times now. Alonzo gets along fine with the neighbors Maltese Zoey, but I think that's because like you said neither cares what the other dog is doing.

Alonzo is a wonderful people dog, he's always giving kisses even to complete strangers. I guess he's just not a dog dog.