Yorkshire Terriers

If you want your Yorkie’s coat to look like the ones you see in the show ring, be prepared to comb it every day and wash it often. You may need to restrict your dog from running where it can get mud, twigs, and leaves in the coat. Carpeting can even break the delicate hair. Even if you don’t want to show, the long side hair of a male dog can get coated in urine and you’d need to keep that pulled out of the way. Females may benefit from a “hygiene” clip to make sure no urine or excrement gets in the coat. You’d also maybe need to learn how to place the hair on the forehead into a topknot. More likely, you’ll find the ease of caring for a clipped Yorkie preferable. This way your dog can run and swim without worry. Most people have a professional groomer clip their Yorkie every 4 to 6 weeks. Groomers usually clip the body short but leave more on the head to give the dog a cuter look. You still need to comb the longer hair every few days, and may need to wash between grooming appointments. Yorkies shed very little.

Yorkies take several steps for every one step you take. They can actually get plenty of exercise running around a large house, or even by playing games inside a small apartment. They can fetch, play keep-away, tug and get more exercise inside than many dogs can get in a yard. Of course, they also need the chance to get outside and walk around the yard or neighborhood and sniff the smells and see the sights. Always beware of the possibility of aggressive dogs when you walk your Yorkie, and have a plan to safeguard your dog if necessary. They’re not ideal for dog parks because of their propensity to look for trouble combined with their tiny size. Most dog sports are just on too large a scale for a tiny dog. They can do agility, but it may take forever for the teeter to come down. Dock diving would be like high-diving for them. You could knock them unconscious if you tried to play Frisbee. Weight pulling would be futile. And while they might enjoy attack dog training, they couldn’t reach high enough to grab the bite sleeve! Mental exercise is equally important. Brain games like little obstacle courses or trick training are great for tiring their minds.

Tiny dogs need more calories per pound of body weight compared to larger dogs. But Yorkies have tiny tummies, so you have to make sure the food has sufficient calories in it. When feeding tiny dogs the balance of the diet becomes harder to maintain. If you hand your big dog a few fallen potato chips it won’t make much impact on their diet, but if you do the same with a tiny dog those chips will become a huge part of their daily intake. They can unbalance the diet and/or add way more calories than you planned to feed. So you have to be extra careful when feeding tiny dogs. Their teeth may have difficulty crunching up some kibbles, but you don't want them to swallow pieces whole. The answer is to get a high quality commercial food especially formulated for small dogs, and even a Yorkie-specific diet. When choosing treats, beware that many commercial dog treats are choking size for small dogs, so you may want to squish or break some of them. Yorkie puppies, especially very young or very small ones, must be guarded against hypoglycemia. Hypoglycemia occurs when the level of sugar in the blood drops too low, usually because a young puppy has gone too long between meals. Aim to feed your young Yorkie puppy at least every 4 hours. Don’t have your baby puppy exercise before bed, when no food will be available overnight. Hypoglycemia is potentially fatal, and a real emergency. Signs start with the puppy being hard to rouse, and acting wobbly. You can help to increase blood sugar by rubbing corn syrup on the puppy’s gums and rushing to the emergency vet. As your puppy ages, you can gradually cut back to three meals a day. Fortunately, most Yorkies will outgrow this danger by the time they’re 6 months old, and then go to two meals a day.