History of the Biewer breed
The first Biewer Yorkshire Terriers were born in the 80s of the XX century in Hunsruk, Germany. The tricolor puppies were born in a family of skilled Yorkshire terrier breeders Werner and Gertrude Biewer. The parents of the first Biewer Terriers were Yorkshire Terriers – Darling von Friedheck and Fru-Fru von Friedheck. It is this couple of dogs who laid the foundation of the Biewer York population. Both dogs had a blue and tan coat. In 1981 at dog shows in Dortmund they won the titles of Junior World Champions.
Since these two dogs had their origins in the same kennel, it has been suggested but not confirmed that in the kennel “Von Friedheck” happened an accidental crossbreeding, the results of which emerged only a few months later.
Ignoring all the talks and gossips around unusual puppies the Biewer family, who at that time had quite wide experience in Yorkshire terriers` breeding, continued to work on a new potential breed. They conducted research and probed the possibility of recessive gene presence in DNA of researched breeding line. A few years later the result of their pedigree work became the creation of the magnificent Biewer Yorkshire Terrier breed with its own external characteristic features and a visibly demonstrable phenotype.
A little while later, something kind of funny happened and played a historical role in the formation of our favorite breed. During the dinner, the husband of the German singer Margot Eskens presented a Biewer Yorkshire terrier puppy on a platter as a gift to his wife. Mrs. Eskens fell so completely in love with this puppy that she exclaimed: “á la Pom Pon”, which means “colorful ball of yarn” in French. Werner and Gertrud Biewer heard about this story. They really liked this expression, so a little later they decided that such a gentle and heartwarming definition of their offspring must be added to the name of the breed.
Critics of the breed for so long argued that Biewer's existence is the result of crossing a Shih Tzu with a Yorkie. They also stated that there was cross-breeding of Maltese, too. These remarks have exasperated German breeders and they strongly refuted these baseless claims.
Fans of the Biewer Yorkshire Terrier breed paid attention to the facts. Because if you take a look at the anatomy of the Shih Tzu, you can see that the head of the representatives of this breed is quite large, the nose bridge is high, the eyes are much larger and have a round and convex shape compared to Biewers. Shih Tzu ears are rounded at the tip and their ears are not standing up like those of the Biewers. Also, the color of representatives of the Shih Tzu breed is not always symmetrical on the head and body. One more factor that helps to distinguish Biewer from Shih Tzu is also that the color scheme on the head and body of the Shih Tzu has only two colors, with the possible addition of a blackouts on the tips of the ears. The Biewer`s coat always has three colors on the head and two on the body. The main colors of the coat of Biewer Yorkshire Terrier have always been white, gold and black, with variations of blue instead of black which is not a defect. It was the tricolor coat (Black-White-Gold/Blue-White-Gold) that from generation to generation was considered as the main one for the Biewer breed.
The main statements of the German breeders were that if during breeding of the Biewer Yorkshire Terrier breed, Shih Tzu had been mixed in aiming to fix the white coat and some other features, the Biewer would have shown changes in the body structure. The new breed would have become stockier with more rounded shape of the ribs. Also, the Biewer would have become more stretched, like a Shih Tzu. The shape of the head would also have changed, instead of a flat muzzle, the head of the Biewer Yorkie would have become more rounded. In addition, the stop would have become more pronounced, the nose bridge would have been shortened and not all representatives of the breed would have had standing up ears.
The main features of the Biewer Yorkshire Terrier were white hair on the belly, chest, paws and always on the tip of the tail. It was strictly forbidden for the Biewer`s coat to be wavy. Docking of the tail also was not allowed, for a while this was even one of the main differences between the Biewer Yorkies and the progenitor Yorkies. Biewer`s back according to the breed standard should be black with white spots.
For the first time Mr. Werner Biewer presented his tricolor dogs at the show in March 1988 in Wiesbaden, Germany. He called them “black and white Yorkshire terrier”. However, the German Kennel Union did not accept them, they were marked as “dogs of the wrong color, not intended for breeding”.
The breeders did not give up and continued to search for an organization capable of accepting their offspring. The German Dog Club was the first club which accepted the Biewer Yorkshire Terrier as a separate, independent breed. The Biewers were registered by the name of Biewer Yorkshire Terrier à la Pom-Pon.
On November 2, 2007, the International Biewer Yorkshire Terrier Club, which is located in Germany, officially approved the Biewer Terrier standard and took this breed under its care.
Over time, the Fédération Cynologique Internationale (FCI) gave the right to kennels working under its auspices to recognize the Biewer Yorkshire Terrier breed at the national level. Since then, Biewers have been able to participate in international cynological events and win titles for their breed qualities. Moreover, around the world there are more than 10 Biewer Terriers breed clubs.
In Ukraine, Biewer Terriers attend national and international dog shows held by the Ukrainian Kennel Union, participate in the pedigree breeding program and bring happiness to many fans of this wonderful breed.
I hope the article was useful to you.
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