The American Parti Yorkie. There seems to be so much to cover here. So many discussions about this, its hard to know where to even start. This will be an analytical look at the parti yorkie, and the biewer. Lets look at it from all angles, and then i'll leave it to you to decide what is right, and what you believe is a worthy breeding pursuit.
1. Parti is just an abbreviation for Piebald. Parti is not a color, its actualluy a pattern that simply covers the dogs coat color with white, randomly. The spotting is where the coat color shows through.
2. There is evidence in the form of letters from the yorkshire terrier breed founder, describing a tri color yorkie born in her litters.
3. It was common place in the early history of breeding dogs, to put a puppy in a bucket of water if it was born – not to standard. This made it so that if a breeder had an oddly colored pup, no one could discredit them as a breeder for having an outlier in their lines. Now days, puppies that are different, are seen as desirable, and less people give into the peer pressure to conform. Some who believe the parti ruins the true goals of breeding the yorkshire terrier, believe that its not a matter of peer pressure but keeping the breed to the standard of blue and gold.
4. Parti Yorkshire terriers can be AKC registered, but not shown.
5. The biewer terrier originally popular in germany, recently (2021) gained AKC registration. The two standards set forth by the respective breed clubs, YTCA and Biewer club, are almost identical. The only difference being yorkies are not bred to the same color/pattern as the biewer. So where does this leave the gorgeous American Parti Yorkie? It leaves us who love the breed and pattern of the parti – unable to show these gorgeous yorkies. The biewer club will not accept any blue and tan yorkies in their lines. What a mess. The breed club YTCA (yorkshire terrier club of america) will not allow the parti yorkie to be shown in the ring. Do those that love the parti yorkie, from lines that will not ever be able to be shown as biewers, have to start their own breed? That could very well be the case, regardless that parti patterned yorkies have been present from the foundation, becaue they believe it to be a color pattern not true to the standard as it stands now.
This picture was hand made by me, Janet Tolbert. To try to make it easier for breeders to understand how the recessive gene, that is a pattern, passes on. If you can gain an understanding of how this passes, you can easily see how the parti gene has been there all along, unseen, but carried. This cannot be said for merle, or chocolate as far as I know. However, foreign registries are already accepting merle. You have to understand , that at the foundation of a breed, other breeds are brought in to acheive a desirable improvement to the breed. For example, the maltese was bred to the yorkie at the foundation of the breed, to improve coat texture from the short raggety coat to a long soft coat. At any point if you bred the yorkie pure, to any other dog, 5 generations breeding back to AKC purebred yorkies, would then be considered pure, but you may have a color there that wasn't there before, or a coat texture. The difference is that it was acceptable at the foundation, and hundreds of years later, its not acceptable to introduce anything else for improvement. Lets talk about that word, improvement. The YTCA sets the standard, and has the power to change the standard. The maltese was brought in to give a desirable improvement to the breed. Improvement, is 100% a matter of opinion.. Just like beauty is a matter of opinion. Wether or not parti is a good thing, or a bad thing, is 100% opinion, by the very making of a breed, it is acceptable to bring in another breed for whats perceived as ok to do for improvement. But if the breed club doesn't see something as an improvement… it will be shunned, just as the parti yorkie is today, by many show elitest breeders who put conformity above all else, and do consider that to be the preserving and protecting of the breed. They see parti as something that should be bred out, and not bred for at all.
The diagram on the left, shows how the gene is passed on. What you can get breeding a parti yorkie to a traditional and so on. Thank you.
