The Yorkshire Terrier is a toy terrier from Great Britain with a long, straight, silky coat. The FCI says it was first seen around the 1850s, in the same area as the Airedale Terrier.[1]
The breed standard
The FCI standard sets a weight of up to 3.2 kg and gives no height. The coat is long and hangs straight down each side with a parting from nose to end of tail, glossy and fine, silky and not woolly. The body colour is dark steel blue, not silver blue, from the back of the skull to the root of the tail, with a rich tan on the head and chest. Any other colour is unacceptable.[1] The standard describes an alert, intelligent toy terrier, spirited with an even disposition.[1]
Name and origin
The FCI says the old Black and Tan Terrier is behind the breed, together with the Maltese and the Skye Terrier, and that the current name was accepted in 1870.[1] The Kennel Club (UK) gives the same ancestry and adds that Scottish labourers working in the mines and cotton mills of Yorkshire probably brought their terriers with them. It names a dog called Huddersfield Ben, born in 1865, as the foundation of the breed. Puppies are born black and tan and change to steel blue and tan with maturity.[2]
Health and lifespan
A study of Yorkshire Terriers under UK veterinary care in 2016 followed 28,032 dogs. The median adult bodyweight was 5.06 kg, above the FCI limit of 3.2 kg. In a random sample of 3,308, the commonest disorders were periodontal disease (21.1%), overgrown nails (6.5%) and anal sac impaction (4.0%). Among the 464 dogs in the sample that died, the median age at death was 13.6 years. The authors found periodontal disease, persistent baby teeth and patellar luxation (a slipping kneecap) to be more common than expected, and describe the breed as having high longevity.[3]
In a separate UK life-table study of veterinary records, life expectancy at birth for the Yorkshire Terrier was 12.54 years (95% confidence interval 12.30–12.77), the second highest of 18 breeds.[4] The two figures measure different things and come from different studies, so they should not be compared directly.
Behavior
In an owner-reported survey of 90 Yorkshire Terriers whose owners belonged to breed clubs, 7.8% were reported to have snapped, bitten or tried to bite an unfamiliar person in the recent past, 1.1% a member of the household and 5.6% an unfamiliar dog. The averages across the 11 breeds in that sample were 2.7%, 0.8% and 2.0%. The breed was not in the survey’s online sample.[5] Breed explains only about 9% of behavioural differences between individual dogs, so an individual’s behaviour can differ a lot from the breed’s average.[6]
Popularity
The AKC recognised the Yorkshire Terrier in 1885.[7] The Yorkshire Terrier ranked 13th on the AKC’s list of most popular breeds in 2025.[8]
Sources
- FCI breed standard 86, Yorkshire Terrier
- The Kennel Club (UK), Yorkshire Terrier breed page
- O’Neill et al. 2025, Companion Animal Health and Genetics 12: 6 (Yorkshire Terriers under UK veterinary care)
- Teng et al. 2022, Scientific Reports 12 (life tables by breed, UK veterinary records)
- Duffy, Hsu & Serpell 2008, Applied Animal Behaviour Science 114: 441–460
- Morrill et al. 2022, Science 376 (breed and behaviour)
- American Kennel Club, breeds by year recognized
- American Kennel Club, most popular dog breeds of 2025