Yorkshire Terrier breeders.

A serious Yorkie breeder leads with toy-breed health screening. They produce OFA or PennHIP patella evaluations on both parents, a current CAER eye exam, a liver bile-acid test (because of the breed's portosystemic shunt risk), and a current cardiac evaluation. They keep their litter indoors with the family from day one and they will not place a puppy under twelve weeks. Toy-breed puppies need that extra developmental time. They tell you the size category of the litter honestly: the AKC standard is four to seven pounds at maturity, and so-called "teacup Yorkies" are puppies bred deliberately below the standard, often with serious health and structural consequences. A breeder advertising teacup or pocket sizes is selling a marketing label, not a breed-standard dog.

Typical price range.

A Yorkshire Terrier puppy from a responsible breeder usually costs between fifteen hundred and three thousand dollars in the United States, with show-quality puppies on the higher end. So-called teacup Yorkies often run four to six thousand dollars, but the markup pays for breeding deliberately undersized dogs, not for quality. Anything under five hundred dollars almost always means the breeder is running a high-volume operation or has skipped health screens. Ask exactly what is included: shots, microchip, dewormer, vet check, AKC paperwork, and the lifetime take-back clause.

Health checks worth asking about.

The Yorkshire Terrier Club of America CHIC requirements include OFA or PennHIP patella evaluations, an annual CAER eye exam, a bile-acid test for portosystemic shunt (PSS) screening, and a cardiac evaluation. Many breeders also run DNA tests for primary lens luxation, degenerative myelopathy, and prcd-PRA. Tracheal collapse is a known concern in toy breeds and is partly conformation-driven; a breeder who avoids extreme miniaturization produces puppies with measurably lower tracheal-collapse risk.