Yorkshire Terrier / Australian Silky Terrier

[krissi]

Hi everyone

I am new to this forum and was wondering if I could get some feedback on both dogs and which sex to choose.

I have two girls 4 and 6 and a maltese shitzu girl Paris who is nearly 8.

We had a few days away over christmas and Paris stayed with a minder who had a Yorkshire Terrier who I fell in love with (LIL BOY)

So i have been looking at this Breed when someone also advised to look at the Australian Silky Terrier, (now very confused)

Im not looking at breeding or showing but I want my little baby that stays little, I do however want papers

Not desperate at buying one as I would like to do as much home work as I can and hope to buy mid to end of the year,

Many thanks

:)

[sheena]

Border Terriers are nice too

[dancinbcs]

The Australian Silky Terrier is more robust with little kids and more readily available than Yorkies. I would be surprised if anyone would sell you a Yorkie when you have a 4 year old. Little kids tend to accidently break tiny dogs like Yorkies. Silkies are still small but that little bit larger and tough enough to hunt the rats and mice they were bred to hunt.

Silkies are smart little characters if you don't mind stubborn. Not sure what the Yorkie temperament is like as they are pretty rare.

[Purdie]

My Inlaws had Australian Silky Terriers for many years .They were good with my children.Terrific little dogs.I know nothing about Yorkshire Terriers.

[Rozzie]

A Silky was my first dog when I was little. She was a great little dog.

[Alibi]

I had a silky terrier who passed away a year ago. Very smart little dog with a true terrier nature, very loyal, trusting and sweet with the family but she took awhile to warm up to people outside the family.

[Austerra]

What about an Australian Terrier, more robust with children and the other dog but also affectionate. Coat probably a lot easier to care for too.

[Furkidsforever]

Yes, Yorkies are not easy to find. We prefer homes with no small children (under 7 years of age) - there are always exceptions, but Yorkies are quite small and easy to pick up and then drop and treat like toys. They are also companion dogs - lap sitters - and are not happy when left alone for long periods of time. They are also good escape artists so you need a good soundly fenced yard. Generally speaking they are a healthy breed with very few major health issues except maybe luxating patella which can be environmentally caused also. Silkies are a little bigger and stronger than Yorkies.

[Dame Aussie]

I don't know that much about either breed but I would agree that with small children a Silky would be a better choice.

Good luck with your search!

[deltoid]

We have two silkies. They are awesome little dogs. Small enough to be lap dogs but with the personality of bigger dogs.

One of ours is 4.5kg the other is 3.5kg. One is a little yappy (not terrible but more than I'd like, working on it). The other one doesn't bark at all.

Both have been really responsive to training and are eager to please (you can literally see the pride in their body language when they do something right).

Biggest issue we've had is toilet training. I would blame that more on us as owners though, we were new to having inside dogs and probably made quite a lot of mistakes in the toilet training category. One of them is pretty good now, the other one knows what to do but I think she is just lazy.

Both dogs have their own personality but they both love simply laying on the couch / your lap as well as playing rough and tumble in the backyard.

I guess that is my best overview of my experience. If you have specific questions let me know.

[becks]

All the yorkies I have met love the wall of death zoomies and have no sense when leaping from off high. Show yorkies are small but there is a huge variation in size.

Tough dogs bred to hunt rats in the yorkshire coalmines

[Darkrai]

First would be what are your children like with small dogs, although the silky is the more suited choice, they can be firey and nippy. Although the yorkie is more fined boned they make excellent family dogs.

But their temprament can sometime be a Nature vs Nuture.

If your interested PM and I'll reccomend some breeders of both and then you can talk to the breeders and then see from there on which breed would be suited to your family and lifestyle :)

[dunnwarren]

I've had silkys for over 30 years, never had a problem with kids, providing they follow the rules and of course are supervised, but you need to do that with any dog. Very robust little dogs, never had a serious health problem. They live long and happy lives, I had a 16 year old bitch here who if you mentioned Schmakos would jump through hoops lol. My kids used to handle mine when they were little now I have grandkids to play with my pups. Can't comment on yorkies as I've never owned one.

[RuralPug]

Ok, so it was decades ago, but as a teenager I was live-in kennel maid to a Yorkie breeder and frequently loaned to that breeder's mum who bred Silkies and Yorkies. My own mother had bred both Aussies and Silkies for years but was breeding Pekinese at the time.

I found a marked difference in temperaments (bearing in mind that these were kennel dogs, not house dogs - and this was in the 1970's so possibly very different to today.)

There are exceptions to every rule of course, but what I noticed at the time was that generally the Silkies had the small terrier temperament I was accustomed to (so active, intelligent, driven at times (aka stubborn) and normally quite gentle and tolerant with small children) where the Yorkies although just as active were less responsive to human interaction that was not on their terms (aka heaps more stubborn as in moody divas) and seemed more prone to snappiness and mild fear aggression with children and larger dogs. They were also generally more yappy and I readily admit that all this may have been restricted to those lines (mind you there was a brought in stud dog of completely different lines who was the worst of the lot).

I have since met pet and show Yorkies that are perfectly well-adjusted companions, but nevertheless those were my observations at the time.

The other consideration is that some pet Yorkies are as big as Silkies anyway so if you wanted to wait for a show sized one then probably you would have to go onto the waiting list for a Yorkie from a show kennel with good temperament so your youngest child could be of reasoning age ( 8 or so)before one actually became available anyway!

[RubyStar]

We had a Silky and a Yorkie as a kid. From memory, the Silky is more robust than the Yorkie. Our Yorkie was particularly fragile though, he broke his leg at about a year old and the poor thing had terrible arthritis for most of his life. Both dogs had lovely temperaments, great with kids. But with young kids, I'd vote for the Silky.