Where and why????

[ShorkieLove]

Where did you get your Shorkie??? How did you come across the breed? When you got your shorkie did you buy the first one you saw?

I got Alice from a yorkie breeder. I had no clue what a Shorkie was I told her what I was looking for in a dog and she said I don't any yorkies that match what you want but I do have one Shorkie girl thats dose. She sent the pic and I was in love. I put a deposit down and waited for her to be of age to  come my house 

[minnie mee]

Well, I wanted a yorkie, but my cousin said that a cousin of hers had had yorkies and that one or the other one was ALWAYS in the hospital.  She suggested I look for a dog that was half yorkie and half something else and which had been genetically tested.  So I looked up yorkie and found shorkie!  It looked like what I wanted.

I checked out two other places before I got mm.  The first place was a supposedly moral pet store, but I didn't want to take the chance after everything I'd read.  The other was a breeder who bred yorkies and shorkies but seemed to be doing it for money (one mobile home and about twenty dogs.  Then I found this great breeder who did one bunch about every six months and had the dog genetically tested and gave a percentage of the money to the SPCA.

I still wasn't sure I wanted a dog.  She sent me pictures of the dogs, each individually.  I have to admit that when I saw MM's picture, my heart fell into my stomach she was so cute.  But I tried to persuade myself to wait till I met the dogs.

I met them all at the nanaimo ferry terminal.  Since I had to wait 3 hours for the next ferry, the nice breeder took me out for lunch!  I held all the puppies.  They were all a bit scared, but Minnie Mee and I seemed to bond pretty fast.  I will never forget that first day, when I took her home.  It took hours!  two hours on a freezing ferry... I wrapped her in my coat... then one hour on a bus, and finally I couldn't take it anymore and took a taxi the rest of the way.  I left her in her enclosure with a pair of my socks when we got home and made her a meal.  When I peeped in, there she was with my socks on her nose.  She took one look at me, with this big smile on her face, wagging her little tail and it was love.  She wouldn't let go of those socks for days, and whined every time she lost them.

 

[Mai Tai]

I had tried rescueing a cairn terrier puppy from a puppy mill, but that did not work out for us.  Unfortunately, the puppy was nice one minute and vicious the next, as if possessed.  Vets told me it had neurological damage and I returned it to the rescue because after 3 weeks of trying to deal with this pup, my kids were terrified.  I got a kitten instead and figured we were just not meant to have a dog, especially as one of my girls was allergic to most dogs except cairns, and, as it turned out, shorkies.  Then fate took over when a good friend had her yorkie accidentally impregnated by her uncle's 15 year old Shih-tzu.  No one knew he had it in him.  She had 3 puppies by some miracle.  Especially difficult since she was only about 5 to 6 lbs and the shih tzu was 15 lbs.  She offered me one and I fell in love with Mai Tai.  About six  months later, after my friend had her first child extremely prematurely, at about 25 months, there was another accidental mating between a brother and sister shorkie, and that is how I ended up with Mojito.  My friend has since had all her dogs neutered, thank God.  She has nine dogs now, and I think that is enough for her, though I sometimes think she would like more...LOL.  The shorkie is addictive.  I am very glad for those two accidnts though. 

[shorkiejem]

ahhhh Mai now you know why you have so many problems with little Moj.  Brother/sister breeding.  Too many of the same genes that doubled up.  And small. But a good little baby right??

muahhhh

[minnie mee]

It's true the shorkie breed is addictive.  I want another one, and I have to keep reminding myself, no, no, one is enough!

[Mai Tai]

Shorkiejem, he is a good little baby, though tiny.  He is still three pounds thirteen ounces at fourteen months, so I think he is done.  I think he got almost all yorkie genes from the shorkie to shorkie brother to sister combo.  His litter mate (not Mai Tai, who is his uncle) on the other hand, seems to have gotten all Shih tzu genes and is over fifteen pounds.  Weird, but that is how genetics plays out when you breed accidentally. 

[Kim]

I was looking to get a puppy because I really wanted one. So I first went to the shelter to look at some of them. I really like some of the ones that were there but unfortunately they already had families looking to adopt them. So then I went looking around pet shops. They mostly had bull dogs and big dogs which would not be ideal for me. This went on for about a year. So then my friend suggested I look at Craigslist, which at first I thought was weird. But I tried and I came across Max. I asked her a few questions and it seems that she did not know much about the dog because she had just gotten him a few days ago and was a first time dog owner. So I asked if I could meet him and I have to say he was cuter in person 

I fell in love and wanted him. My bf was a bit hesitant because he wasn't sure how big Max was going to get and he was not potty trained. But I convinced him to let me keep him.

Oh yea, as I was meeting with the former owner, some lady came up to us and offered to adopt Max saying that she was going to give him a better home then I can because she already had a dog. Really rude. Luckily, the former owner told her that I was already promised Max so she then angrily left while muttering something under her breath.

[minnie mee]

Boy, that second owner sounds like she would have been horrible!  Lucky Max!  why was the first owner giving him away?  Allergies or something?  He is so cute, I can see why you fell in love!

[Kim]

She says her husband was getting allergies around the dog which I think is weird because they are hypoallergenic. But it's great because I got to have him.

[Mai Tai]

Hypoallergenic does not mean they won't give someone an allergic reaction, it just means they are less likely to.  My daughter is allergic to most dogs, even hypoallergenic ones because it is the saliva, not the dander, she is allergic to.  Thankfully, she has no problem with shorkies.  Also, people use that as a common excuse when they realize they have gotten in over their heads with a new dog.  I think  a lot of people decide to get a dog impulsively without thinking it through and don't realize what they are in for until it is too late.  I know that even though I thoroughly planned on getting Mo and he was a second dog, so I knew what it would probably be like, he was a bit much for me for quite a few months.  I really thought maybe I had made a mistake, but of course, I am happy now.

[raleysmom]

I got my little one from a small yorkie breeder.  She is retired from the post office and breeds yorkies, toy poodles and shih tzus.  She does not breed the moms repeatedly, though.  I started out looking for a yorkie.  I got on the phone and called several vets within a 50 mile radius.  The last one I called told me about this lady.  When I spoke to her on the phone she told me she did not have any yorkies available but that she had 2 yorkie tzus.  I said, "you have what??"  She explained to me that the mom was yorkie and dad shih tzu...so I agreed to go look at them.  She had 2 left.  I fell in love when I walked in her front door!!!  I was also able to see both parents as well as where these puppies had been born.  This lady loves her "babies"!!  I have kept in touch with her and she enjoys telling me about her most recent litter, etc.....

[phr775]

I got Lucy from my niece. Her best friend's family up in West Virginia breeds Shih Tzus. The next door neighbor had a rogue Yorkie to get loose, and well.....

Anyway, she gave my niece one, and my SIL forbade her to bring any dogs to live in the house on account of siblings' severe allergies. I have severe allergies too, but mine seem confined to cat dander. I had been looking for a dog for a really long time. I couldn't find anything. Anything at all. I was going to try having her at the house just to see how it would go.

To this day I have had nary a cough, sneeze, anything! I was soo happy. She was about 8 weeks old when we got her. She's just so stinkin' cute!!! And so funny. And SO attached to us, especially me.

I paid my niece about $50, just the cost of the things she had bought for Lucy. We had her spayed for free. I had never even heard of a Shorkie until I started Googling "Yorkshire terrier/Shih Tzu mixes"