Yorkie vs Maltese: Which Toy Breed Actually Fits Your Home and Your Vet Visits

By Jessica Ennis, DVM, CVA

Breed care · August 21, 2026 · 6 min read

Yorkie vs Maltese usually comes down to coat upkeep and joint risk, not looks, once you weigh both honestly.

Owners tell me the choice between a Yorkshire Terrier and a Maltese comes down to which one “looks nicer” in photos. I push back on that every time. Both breeds live under a strict weight ceiling, both are prone to a joint problem most owners have never heard of, and both will need a grooming or dental routine that either fits your week or quietly fails. Treat the coat as the tiebreaker it actually is, not the deciding factor.

The disputed premise: are they basically the same small dog?

At a glance, a Yorkie and a Maltese look interchangeable — long, silky single coats, toy-sized frames, big personalities in small bodies. That resemblance is doing a lot of work in how people choose between them, and I think it’s misleading. The two breeds carry different default health liabilities, and the coat that looks similar in a photo behaves very differently in a bathtub, on a brush, and at a dental cleaning.

Genetically, they’re not close cousins. The Yorkshire Terrier descends from working terrier stock bred down in size for the Victorian textile mills of northern England, which is part of why the breed still carries a scrappy, alert terrier temperament. The Maltese has a much older lapdog lineage, bred for centuries purely as a companion, and it tends to show a softer, more velcro-adjacent temperament as a result. Neither history predicts coat maintenance on its own, but it does predict a lot about daily behavior, and behavior is what most owners underweight when they’re comparing photos side by side.

What actually differs: joints, teeth, and coat physics

Start with joints, because it’s the more consequential of the two divergences. The Yorkshire Terrier carries one of the higher breed-specific rates of patellar luxation — a kneecap that slides out of its normal groove — of any breed studied. A large primary-care dataset from England found Yorkshire Terriers had roughly 5.5 times the odds of a patellar luxation diagnosis compared with crossbred dogs, and breed demography work on Yorkshire Terriers under primary veterinary care in the UK – demography and disorders: Yorkshire Terriers under primary veterinary care in the UK lists it among the most frequently recorded orthopedic findings in the breed. Small bodyweight itself is part of the mechanism: dogs below their breed-and-sex mean weight had roughly 1.4 times the odds of a luxation diagnosis in that same population, according to the analysis published on The epidemiology of patellar luxation in dogs attending primary-care veterinary practices in England: patellar luxation epidemiology in primary-care practice. Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine notes the condition is graded on a four-point scale and that lower grades may never need surgery, which is worth knowing before a diagnosis turns into panic.

Maltese dogs are not exempt from patellar luxation, but their more consistent lifetime liability sits in the mouth. PetMD describes dental disease as one of the breed’s most consistently reported health issues, and the mechanism is straightforward: a small jaw crowds adult teeth into tight arrangements, plaque accumulates faster than it does in larger breeds, and periodontal disease then progresses on a shorter timeline if it isn’t interrupted. Daily brushing started in puppyhood is the single highest-leverage habit for slowing that progression, more than any dental chew or water additive.

Both breeds have the same low-slung silky coat, but they part ways in upkeep. A Yorkie’s coat, when kept long, mats faster around the legs and ears because of its fine, straight structure and typically needs daily brushing plus a trim every four to six weeks to avoid painful matting near the skin. A Maltese coat is comparably fine but slightly less prone to the tight cording pattern Yorkies develop, though it still needs the same daily-brushing commitment if kept long; most pet owners of either breed opt for a shorter “puppy cut” specifically to cut that maintenance burden down.

I had a Yorkie patient, Biscuit, come in at eleven years old weighing four and a half pounds, whose owner had noticed her skipping the middle step of a two-step stool she’d used for years to reach the bed. It had been happening for about six weeks before the visit — not a sudden limp, just a hesitation before the jump, and occasional single-leg skips when she trotted across the hardwood in the living room. On exam she had a grade II patellar luxation in the left stifle, reducible with gentle pressure. We didn’t operate. We adjusted her routine: ramps instead of jumps, weight held steady rather than allowed to drift up, and a recheck in three months. Eighteen months later she was still skipping the same knee occasionally but hadn’t progressed to a higher grade, and the owner had learned to read that early skip as information rather than an emergency.

Where the whole picture fits together

Neither breed’s joint or dental risk is a reason to avoid it — both are manageable with the right home setup, and neither problem shows up in every dog of the breed. What changes the odds in your favor is treating prevention as routine rather than reactive. For joints, that means ramps or steps to furniture from the day you bring either breed home, keeping bodyweight at the lean end of normal, and asking your vet to grade patellar stability at every wellness visit rather than waiting for a visible skip. For teeth, especially in a Maltese, that means brushing becomes as automatic as feeding, not an occasional weekend project. If you already own a breed with similar mobility considerations, the setup principles from our guide on apartment living breed fit and the routines outlined for low-maintenance dog breeds carry over directly to toy breeds, even though neither piece was written with a seven-pound dog specifically in mind. Owners comparing brachycephalic mobility tradeoffs in our French Bulldog vs Boston Terrier piece will recognize the same pattern here: the headline breed comparison matters less than the specific structural liability each breed carries into your home.

The owners I see most often ask me to just tell them which breed is “healthier,” and I understand the instinct, but it isn’t the honest answer. A Maltese owner who never brushes teeth will do worse by that dog than a Yorkie owner who does. A Yorkie owner who lets weight drift up two pounds past the breed standard will do worse by that dog’s knees than a Maltese owner who keeps a ramp by every piece of furniture. The breed sets the liability; the routine decides whether it becomes a problem.

Owner checklist before you choose

• Commit to daily brushing for either breed if you plan to keep the coat long — budget for professional grooming every four to six weeks if not
• Ask your vet to grade patellar stability at each wellness visit, especially in a Yorkie, rather than waiting for a visible limp
• Keep bodyweight at the lean end of normal for the individual dog, since being under a healthy weight has also been linked to higher luxation odds
• Install a ramp or steps to furniture from puppyhood in either breed to reduce repetitive-jump stress on the knees
• Start tooth brushing in puppyhood for a Maltese specifically, since dental disease tends to progress faster in small, crowded jaws
• Choose a shorter “puppy cut” for either breed if daily brushing isn’t realistic for your household

So which one actually fits your life — the dog whose knees need watching, or the dog whose teeth need daily attention?