What the heck is a teacup dog anyway?
It is important to realize that “teacup” dogs are not recognized as official breeds. That is to say, there is technically no such thing as a “teacup Chihuahua”, “teacup Yorkie”, or “teacup Maltese”. People may believe that they have obtained a special breed called a “teacup” this or that but in fact they have just bought a particularly small example of the overall breed. The term “teacup” is a descriptive term, and could be considered a marketing gimmick. In fact, most of these dogs are smaller than breed standards suggest, and are considered by true breed fanciers to be very poor examples of the breed. This is important because innocent people are paying very large sums of money for what they believe are very fancy dogs from an exclusive breed, while in fact this is not true. The term “toy” has also been misused. It is important to understand the terminology to avoid being deceived. There are eight traditional dog breed groups, including working dogs, herding dogs, sporting dogs, terr
