The breeds · companion
AKC Toy · UKC Companion · FCI standard 86
Yorkshire Terrier.
UKC history: developed in the 19th century, when the dog weighed about 15 lb, to control rats in the coal mines and cotton mills of Yorkshire; the Waterside Terrier ancestor was bred for hunting and killing rats. AKC page: earned its living as a ratter in mines and mills long before it became a Victorian lapdog. RKC: owes its origins to the old working Black and Tan Terrier with infusions of Maltese and Skye Terrier; still has terrier features and can account for any domestic rodent. FCI 86: Group 3 Terriers, toy terriers, utilization companion; the terrier-like hunting instinct shows 'be it for a toy in the house or a rodent in the garden'. Wikipedia: mill workers and miners bred a ratting terrier; today usually a companion..
Breed sets the odds. The parents set the dog. Every number here shows its source, its spread and how sure we are. Nothing on this page is a prediction about one dog.
The body
What the breed is built like. Registry standards give an ideal, not a range.
Height at the shoulder
Single registry source and it is a page band, not a standard.
Weight
AKC, UKC and FCI agree on a 7 lb ceiling (3.2 kg = 7.05 lb, shown as 7.1). Low 3 lb is the UKC history's 'three to seven pounds' typical size, not a standard minimum. A ceiling, not an ideal, so center is blank.
Coat
Registries agree on coat and colour. Tail: AKC says docked to a medium length; UKC and FCI allow an undocked tail.
Shedding
Registry bands and club description; no study opened.
Heat tolerance
Derived from the coat. A long coat sits at 2 on the scale; a fine single coat with no undercoat sits higher; held at 3 as a flagged judgement, and a clipped pet coat would sit higher. Derived from the standard's coat description and, for the flat-faced breeds, from the registries' own statements on airway and heat; no heat-illness study was opened.
How long they live, and what they costSources differ
Two numbers, two measures. Median lifespan: in a large sample of this breed, the age by which half had died; read it as the typical lifespan (UK, 2024, 584,734 dogs). Life expectancy at birth: how many years a newborn of this breed is expected to live, worked from the death rates at every age in UK veterinary records, the same life-table method used for people (VetCompass, 2022). It runs lower because every early death pulls the average down and because it comes from clinics, not registries. KENAI leads with the median and shows the other beside it. Neither is averaged.
Median lifespan
McMillan et al. 2024 / Dogs Trust table: a very large sample, so the interval is narrow. UK population. Sources differ with life_expectancy_yr (next row), a different measure. The AKC page 11 to 15 year band is a band, not a median, and is not used. Wikipedia's other-study figures are summaries of studies that were not opened.
Life expectancy at birth
Sources differ with median_lifespan_yr: life expectancy at birth from VetCompass life tables against median age at death in a registry-linked sample; both shown, never averaged. Teng 2022 Table 3 read at the nature.com table page.
The dog at home
What the breed asks of a day. The first thing most homes get wrong.
Exercise need
RKC is a UK registry band, not a study; mapped by the library rule (up to 30 = 30). The AKC page scores energy higher (4 of 5), shown below.
Exercise need
AKC bands are not mapped to minutes; RKC supplies the minutes figure. The AKC bands read as more active than the RKC band; both stand.
Energy
AKC breed page trait score, 1 to 5: a breed-club tendency, never a measurement.
Grooming load
RKC band mapped by the library rule (every day = 4). The AKC page band (5 of 5) reads higher for a show coat; the clipped pet coat the club and Wikipedia describe is lighter. Both shown.
The work
What it was built to do in the field, and what a test or trial asks of it.
Role
A mill and mine ratter by history, a companion today. The UKC, AKC, RKC and FCI texts agree on the history.
Primary game
History plus residual instinct; no source describes the Yorkshire Terrier ratting commercially today.
Field trial standard
No Earthdog scoring or pass rate read.
How common the problems are
Evaluated dogs skew toward breeding stock; the numbers are still the best there are.
Hip dysplasia
OFA's own breed statistics. OFA-evaluated dogs skew toward breeding stock (owners and breeders submit films, and poor results are less likely to be submitted), so this is not the rate across all dogs of the breed; the true population rate is not known. OFA rank 1 = highest rate among the breeds listed. Wikipedia (editorial) lists Legg-Calve-Perthes disease, a different hip disorder of young Yorkies, which this figure does not capture.
Most common disorders
Single editorial source for the named disorders, summarising sources that were not opened. No VetCompass Yorkshire Terrier paper was read.
What the studies found
Population-level findings, shown as a spread. Breed sets the odds; the parents set the dog.
Aggression, as studied
Population-level questionnaire findings from owners, never a prediction for one dog. The paper's figures (Figs. 2A and 4A) were not read; only the text discussion. The breed's mean scores are not printed in Table 5, so no cbarq trait row is filled.
More
akc bands
Fourteen AKC bands in one row; the selector reads each by name. Breed-club ratings: a tendency, never a measurement.
How to read this page
Every value carries a label. Measured means peer-reviewed data on many dogs. Studied means peer-reviewed, smaller or indirect. Breed club means a club or registry states it. Editorial means expert opinion with no measurement behind it. Where two good sources disagree, both are shown and neither is averaged.
Published when the entry rests on the best information available from no fewer than three independent sources, checked by a second pass that did not write it. 10 sources on this page. Found something wrong? Tell us and the correction is logged with its date.
- Also called
- Yorkie
Every breed, read the same way.
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