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Yorkie health testing: what to ask your breeder
Patella grades, the bile acid test for liver shunt, and what trachea grading actually means, so you know what to ask for before you pay a deposit.
Home / Yorkie Health Testing
Patella grades, the bile acid test for liver shunt, and what trachea grading actually means, so you know what to ask for before you pay a deposit.
Our own choosing-a-puppy checklist tells you to ask for a patella evaluation, a liver-shunt bile acid test, an eye exam, and a cardiac check on both parents. This page is the deeper version: what a patella grade actually means, what the bile acid test result should look like, what a cardiac clearance covers, and why collapsing trachea does not come with the same kind of paperwork the other three do.
Luxating patella, a kneecap that slips out of its groove, is one of the most common orthopedic problems in small and toy breeds, and the Yorkshire Terrier is named specifically as one of the breeds most often affected. A vet checks for it by hand during a physical exam and assigns a grade on the 4-point scale used by the Orthopedic Foundation for Animals.
Grade I means the kneecap can be pushed out of place with pressure but snaps back the moment the pressure is released. Grade II means it slips out on its own sometimes, usually during movement, then returns on its own. Both are considered mild, and a dog at either grade may show no outward symptoms at all.
Grade III means the kneecap is out of place most of the time and can only be pushed back by hand. Grade IV means it stays out permanently and cannot be repositioned manually at all. Dogs at these grades are more likely to need surgery.
The Yorkshire Terrier Club of America requires a patellar evaluation, along with an eye exam, for a dog to earn a CHIC number, the club's baseline health-testing credential. The minimum age for that evaluation is 1 year, since a younger dog's joints are still developing and an earlier result is not considered reliable. Ask which grade both parents received, not just whether they "passed." A breeder who calls a Grade I the same as a Grade 0, no luxation at all, is rounding up.
Along with patella evaluation, an annual eye exam is the other test the Yorkshire Terrier Club of America requires for CHIC certification. It has a specific name, a CAER exam through the Companion Animal Eye Registry, and it has to be performed by a board-certified veterinary ophthalmologist, a DACVO, not just any licensed vet. Ask for the exam date on both parents. A result from three years ago does not tell you much about a dog's eyes today, since some inherited conditions develop later in life rather than showing up young.
The OFA runs two different cardiac clearance levels, and they are not interchangeable. A Basic Cardiac exam is a stethoscope check, called auscultation, that any licensed vet can perform, and it only clears a dog for congenital defects, meaning ones a dog is born with. An Advanced Cardiac exam has to be performed by a board-certified veterinary cardiologist and, since 2020, has to include an echocardiogram. It produces two separate clearances: one for congenital disease, considered permanent once given, and one for adult-onset disease, valid for a year at a time. Both levels have a minimum age of 12 months. Ask which level was done, and if it was advanced, ask for the date of the adult-onset portion specifically.
A liver shunt, formally a congenital portosystemic shunt, is an abnormal blood vessel that lets blood bypass the liver instead of being filtered through it. This is not a general small-breed footnote. The Yorkshire Terrier is one of the breeds most frequently affected, with some veterinary sources estimating the condition in roughly 3 percent of the breed, well above most other breeds, though estimates like this vary and are not a precise diagnosis for any individual dog. It is exactly why our own choosing-a-puppy checklist calls out the bile acid test by name rather than lumping it in with general testing.
The test itself is simple: a blood draw before a meal, then a second draw about two hours after eating, comparing the two bile acid levels. It is usually run on puppies between 6 and 12 weeks old, since catching a shunt early changes the treatment options available. A puppy that grows more slowly than its littermates is exactly the kind of case this test is meant to catch. If a breeder cannot produce this result, or gives a vague answer about it, treat that the same way our red-flags list already treats missing health testing in general: a real gap, not a minor omission. If your own puppy ever shows signs like poor growth, unusual lethargy after meals, or neurological symptoms, that is a conversation for your vet right away, regardless of what a screening test said months earlier.
Collapsing trachea comes up in nearly every Yorkie health resource, in the same breath as patella and liver shunt. Here is the honest difference: it is not part of the Yorkshire Terrier Club of America's CHIC requirements the way patella and eye exams are. There is no standardized pre-breeding certification test for it, so a breeder who cannot hand you trachea paperwork is not necessarily hiding anything. Patella and eye testing check the parents before breeding happens. Trachea health is usually assessed later, in an individual dog, if and when it shows symptoms.
The trachea's C-shaped cartilage rings weaken over time, and the tissue connecting them starts to sag inward, narrowing the airway. Veterinarians grade the severity on a 4-point scale based on how much the airway narrows.
Grade 1 is roughly a 25 percent reduction in airway diameter. Grade 2 is roughly 50 percent. A honking cough, more goose-like than a typical bark-cough, and tiring faster than expected on walks are the classic early signs at these grades.
Grade 3 is roughly a 75 percent reduction. Grade 4 leaves less than 10 percent of the airway open and is considered severe. Dogs at this stage often show real breathing difficulty, not just an occasional cough.
A harness instead of a collar reduces day-to-day pressure on the trachea, which is worth doing whether or not a dog has ever shown a symptom. Our care guide covers this alongside the rest of day-to-day life with a Yorkie.
Every OFA result is public and searchable by a dog's registered name. A CHIC number is the shortcut: it confirms a dog completed every test the Yorkshire Terrier Club of America recommends, not just the ones a breeder chose to run and share with you.
Our care guide covers what to keep watching for once your puppy is home, including the harness-not-collar habit and when to bring knee or trachea concerns to your vet. Health testing on the parents lowers risk. It does not remove it, which is also why our choosing-a-puppy checklist treats vague answers about testing as a red flag on its own, not a minor detail.
A CHIC number comes from the OFA's Canine Health Information Center and means a dog completed every test the Yorkshire Terrier Club of America recommends, with the results made public, good or bad. It does not mean every result was normal. It means nothing was hidden. You can look up a dog's CHIC record yourself at ofa.org.
Hip dysplasia is not one of the two tests the Yorkshire Terrier Club of America requires for CHIC certification, patella and eye exam are. It is a much bigger concern in large breeds. Some Yorkie breeders screen for it anyway as a bonus, but do not expect it, and do not treat its absence as a red flag the way you would missing patella or eye results.
No. Luxating patella has a genetic component, so testing the parents lowers the odds, but conformation and normal wear play a role too. Clear parents are not a guarantee. Ask your vet to check your puppy's knees at routine visits regardless of what the parents tested.
There is no standardized pre-breeding certification test for tracheal collapse the way there is for patella or eye disease, so it is not on the Yorkshire Terrier Club of America's CHIC list. A breeder who cannot hand you trachea paperwork is not necessarily hiding anything. Ask instead whether they have seen the honking cough that signals it in any of their own dogs or littermates.
Every OFA result is public and searchable. Ask for the registered name of both parents and look it up at ofa.org. A real result is public. A breeder who will not give you a name to search, or only offers a screenshot with no way to check it, is telling you something on its own.
Every puppy on this site comes from parents with health testing. Ask to see it, check the dates, and search the registered names yourself before you pay a deposit.
About the breedRead the full breeder-vetting checklist