There is an awesome place to go that will help you to decide if you want a Maltese. Malteseonly.com. They have a forum and everyone is very helpful.

<Maltese Breeder
 

I am in Missouri and I do know some very good Maltese show breeders here.
I am a Yorkie show breeder here as well. And I must say not only dowe have puppy mills and BYB's, pet shops ect. but so do many other states...
I think one has to be intelligent and talk to each breeder to see how they do things in order to be cautious when purchasing any type of pet. I was getting my hair done today and my hair dresser has one of my retired champion girls and the lady before me was talking about her 6 mth. old yorkie girl she has. And how she is worried about her only weighing 2 lbs, and her temperment of being afraid of people. When I asked where she bought her Yorkie from it was a breeder in the newspaper in Arkansas. Who has many other breeds and they were out in a kennel building and she picked her little darling... As far as I am concerend she did not do her homework, and even though I said nothing to her, she did buy from a puppy mill. Her husband is a doctor so $$$ could not have been the issue!
There is good and bad everywhere!

Good 'ol Missouri
 

Yeah, of course there are good and bad everywhere and you've really gotta do some educated research, but as far as the USDA is concerned Missouri is number one as far as numbers of puppy mills and puppy auctions in North America.

Just an FYI, no doubt there are good breeders there and I personally love the state because my mom and dad both were born there (cape gerardo and hannibal), but that doesn't stop the fact that it's still chaulk full of bad ones!

Not trying to argue, just wanting this person to know that.

I go to that same hair dresser. And one day I was in there talking to her about my yorkie while you were waiting to get your hair done after me. She was 6 months old at the time and did only weigh a little over 2 lbs. My husband is also a doctor, so I have a bad feeling you are talking about me. Which is fine, but if that's the case....I got her from a breeder in MO not AR and yorkies were the only breed. They all lived in the house with them. Also, I was concerned with her weight because they said she would get around 5 lbs. She loves people and other animals. Although my husband is a doctor, he is still in his 1st year of a 5 year long residency, so money was an issue. If you divide up the number of hours worked by what he makes, it's barely minimum wage. Anyway, I just wanted to set the record straight in case you were referring to me. Also, as I was disappointed that I did not find this website before getting my baby, I had spoken to the two women at that salon who have yorkies, and since I was only looking for a pet, not a show dog, I did what I thought was best. I had read several yorkie books and checked out a few different breeders...and some of those I do think were puppy mills...but I got a good feeling from my breeder, the dogs were well cared for and they didn't have a ton. They use studs from another well known breeder in the KC area that a friend of mine purchased a yorkie from.

I would probably go for the maltese, but I'm more of a more the merrier person when it comes to different kinds of breeds. My hubby says that our next little dog is going to be another Reagan though, aka yorkie. I would love either a maltese or papillion. My friend had a much easier time housebreaking her malt. than I did with my yorkie. Other than that I don't know much about the malt. The coat maintenence might scare me off though, just because I have a habit of slacking with Reagan but its ok to slack with her b/c she rarely gets mats. The only other thing would be the white coat, I would be a freak about keeping it white white white so that might drive me crazy. Either way I don't think you can go wrong.

I love Malteses. I had one before, y'all are making me want another one now. Stop!

We have a yorkie and a maltese. the yorkie is very high maintenance and moody and needs lots of attention, which she gets because she is so darn cute. The Maltese is a true lapdog - he is very sweet, never demanding, unless he wants to go out to potty and he tells us every time. He will sit in my lap for hours and loves to play ball. I can tell you if we had gotten the maltese before we got the yorkie we would have been in for a real shock because they are so very different in temprament. We adore them both and they are best friends. Our maltese does have tear stains but after a while you don't see them anymore. He gets dirty just like the yorkie. They are both adorable.

My best BEST friend has had two maltese. I love her current, dog, ditto, but he is a pain in the bum. I know he's only ONE maltese and I can't judge all of them on him. He is So cute.. but she's had him for maybe 5 years now and he STILL is not broken of his yipping habit. He NON-stop barks and it's very frustrating. I'm sure you have this happen with any breed.. but my experience so far has not lead me to this problem with yorkies. Hopefully, he's only one of a kind. They sure are cute though, aren't they? little white furballs...it's great.