As we usually do, we went to some garage sales Saturday morning and, as we usually do, we took our Yorkies with us.

Our Yorkies are affectionate little creatures, and they love going out where they get to meet people. They recognize what's going on in the house as we get ready to go, and they keep running back and forth from wherever I am at the moment to the ottoman in the living room where they always sit to have their harnesses put on. They also get brushed there before the harnesses go on.  They will stand like little statues while I brush them, because they know that the brushing is a necessary prerequisite to going. I don't dare put them into their harnesses before I'm ready to take them to the car - because as soon as they're in the harnesses, they are READY! They run and stand at the door, whining and pleading to be let out.

Funny thing is, once they are in the car, they calm down. They know they're going and they're just alert to what's going on around them.

I go along just to drive, to tote heavy stuff to the car, and to enjoy the time with my wife without the ever-present distractions at home - so I don't even get out of the car at every stop. When the wife gets out, the girls hardly react at all. When I reach for the door handle, though, things change. THEN, they are excited. THEN they know their world is about to expand!

Bailey and Meggie love attention. This seems to be common among Yorkies. Ours crave it as much as food and water, and they usually get a good bit of it in the course of a morning of garage sales. When we get out, they are generally very well behaved. They are eager to explore the area, but they aren't hyper and they're not tugging at the leash. Let someone take note of them and show an interest in petting them, though, and that all changes. Of course they are on a leash, and that's a VERY good thing. Only the most ardent animal lover could withstand the unrestrained onslaught of these two furry attention-seeking missiles once they have been acknowleged. You can almost hear their thoughts - "YES! ME ... ME ... MEEEEEEEEE! PET ME! I'M RIGHT HERE! OOOOOOOOOO ... MORE PETTING! DON'T STOP!"

When that person stops, I direct the pups away, and they are once again calmly checking out their surroundings - until someone else pauses to pet them.

By the time we have gone through this at a dozen or more stops, the effort of being charming and loving catches up with them and they are taking naps in the car between stops. They usually sleep away at least half of the morning when they're at home, so staying alert and active all morning finally has them ready to return to home, lunch, and a long nap full of dreams of great masses of humanity with nothing else to do but love them.

“How does a dog determine it’s bedtime?”

As I’ve mentioned before, our Yorkies sleep in our bed. If yours don’t, it probably sounds seriously uninviting to you – as it did to me with all of the other dogs I’ve ever had - and I won't be able to explain it to you. If yours do, I’m sure I don’t have to explain myself to you.

The fact that Bailey and Meggie sleep in our bed brings up a question I’ve thought about for some time. “How does a dog determine it’s bedtime?” After all, ours have been laying around – actually sleeping - most of the evening anyway. For some reason, though, at about 9pm they decide it is time to go to bed.

Whether I am sitting watching TV or sitting at my desk working or reading, at just about 9 o’clock they wake up and start staring pleadingly at me (you know the look, don’t you?). If I don’t respond within a minute or so, the little cries start. If the cries don’t get my attention, a bark follows. And still more barks follow if I still don’t respond quickly enough.

When I get up from wherever I’m sitting, they run for the back door to go out to go potty. Understand this – they don’t need me to let them out. They have a doggie door. But they want my wife or I to go to the door so that we will know they have gone potty. They want us to know it, because then they get a treat.

As soon as they have gotten their treats, they head for the bedroom at a run. They are so excited you would think that this is the absolute high point of the entire day. Better than food. Better than walks. Better than rides in the car. THIS is what they've been waiting for all day!

The door is closed, because the bedroom is one of the areas of the house where they don’t have unrestricted access. They stand in front of the door, looking back toward me then looking at the bedroom door and then back at me until I open the door. At that point, they run in and jump up on the bed.

Well, they’re little enough and the bed is big enough that they don't just jump directly onto the bed. They jump onto a little footstool that sits beside a trunk at the foot of the bed. From it, they jump onto the trunk and then onto the bed. Meanwhile, I am turning back the covers and putting the pillows on the bed, and they crash. Usually, they are laying down before I even turn and head towards the door.

So from all of this my question arose. What separates their “sleeping wherever I happen to be” time from their “bedtime?” I wish I could comprehend the activity in those sweet little brains!

Why Blog About Yorkies?

First and foremost, I know about Life With Yorkies because I live with Yorkies. Two of them.

I’ve been around more years than I care to think about, and I’ve had dogs for a good number of those years. I have loved every single one of them - they were great friends and companions - but I really can’t say that any of them completely took over my life. Not until a Yorkie joined our family, that is.

Getting a Yorkie wasn’t my idea. It was my wife’s. She had been saying for over a year that she wanted to get a dog again. We had been without a dog for over ten years, and losing our last one (a miniature Schnauzer) had been so heartbreaking that I just didn’t have any interest in going through that again. Our kids were grown, though, and I guess the maternal instinct in my wife just drove her to look for some little creature to care for. She settled on a Yorkie. I kept telling her we couldn’t really afford one, but the whole time I was keeping my eyes open for one to get for her.

For her. That was my attitude at the time. She wants a Yorkie pup, so I’m going to get one for her. I’ll have more to say later about how quickly and how dramatically attitudes can change – but for now I’ll just continue with my search for HER dog.

One day shortly before Mother’s Day in 2006 I was at work and opened the newspaper at lunch time for a quick glance at the dogs for sale area in the classified ads – something I was doing a few times each week. I don’t remember exactly what the ad that I saw that day said, but I know the price caught my attention. These pups were actually in our price range! I called and learned that the owners could meet with us later that afternoon – but they were over an hour away. I called my wife and told her that I really needed for her to get ready quickly to go someplace with me – without asking any questions.

Any guys reading this – how often has something like that worked for you? Well, it didn’t work for me either. I had to tell her where we were going and why, but it did get her ready quickly. I excused myself from work (“Urgent family matter I have to take care of”), picked up my wife (and our granddaughter who was spending the day with her) and headed up the road.

When we got there, we found that there were six of the cutest little creatures I had ever seen! Four of them were the puppies – the other two were the parents. One of the babies was a male, and he was already spoken for. A female was also spoken for, but the buyers hadn’t come to make their selection yet – so we actually had first choice among the three little girls. Well, the puppy was going to be my wife’s Mothers Day present, so SHE had first choice among the three little girls. Up until the time we got there I had, for the most part, been indifferent to getting a puppy. It was just for my wife.

When I started getting acquainted with Daisy and Roscoe (the puppies’ parents) and with the puppies, that all changed quickly and dramatically. By the time we had been there 15 minutes, I was trying to figure out how I could afford to buy both of the little females that were still available. That didn’t happen, but we spent the better part of two hours there. My wife played with all of the puppies together and each of them individually, and she finally made here choice. Some time in the future, I’ll have to write a bit about the joy of first being exposed to Yorkies – but not today.

Our lives changed that day. Bailey (that’s what my wife named our new baby) wasn’t just a pet in the house. Even before the hour ride home began, Bailey had won our hearts. She was a new family member.

We stopped at Petsmart on the way home. Remember – this was pretty sudden. We didn’t have ANYTHING at home for a puppy. We did have a little bit of food with us. Enough for about a week. The breeders were thoughtful enough to send home with us a small bag of the food that all of the puppies had been eating.

But we had no crate/kennel, no bedding, no toys … as we walked around in Petsmart, we realized just how much there was to not have, and we did not have ALL of it. We spent another $100 there, and it seemed that almost daily for a month or more, we thought of more things that Bailey “needed.”

As I write this, that was 27 months ago, and life is far different at our house. My wife often says that it’s a pretty sad commentary when about all you talk about is your dogs. I prefer to think it says a lot about your dogs when they rise above all of mundane daily stuff as a topic of conversation.

If you have a Yorkie (or more than one), you will certainly know what I mean. If you don’t have one, your day will come. In either case, you know why we’re here. We love our Yorkies. I plead guilty to being obsessed with Yorkies. And I’m happy you’ve dropped in. I hope you find enough of interest to bring you back!