Yorkshire Terrier vs Maltese: Which Toy Breed Actually Ages Better?

By Jessica Ennis, DVM, CVA

Breed Care Guides · August 16, 2026 · 5 min read

Comparing a Yorkie and a Maltese comes down less to looks and more to which set of lifelong risks you're prepared to manage.

A twelve-year-old Yorkie named Pixel came into my exam room a few winters back, back legs skipping every few strides across the tile floor, the owner certain it was “just how she walks.” It wasn’t. It was a luxating patella that had been quietly worsening for years, and by the time we scanned her knees, arthritis had already set into both. Two exam rooms later that same week, I saw a nine-year-old Maltese named Biscuit whose owner’s real complaint wasn’t the joints at all — it was breath so bad she’d stopped letting him near her face. His gums told the rest: heavy tartar, one loose premolar, early bone loss on X-ray. Same size dog, same general life stage, two entirely different aging trajectories. That contrast is the honest answer to “Yorkie vs Maltese”: you’re not choosing a size or a face, you’re choosing which biology you’ll be managing by year eight.

The verdict, stated plainly

If I’m counseling a client with no strong preference already, I lean Maltese for the household that dreads dental maintenance less than joint maintenance, and I lean Yorkie for the household that will actually brush teeth weekly but is nervous about surgery bills. Neither breed is the “easier” dog in absolute terms. What differs is which system fails first, and how predictable that failure is. I’d rather counsel a client on a known, manageable risk than let them discover an unmanaged one at year nine.

Why the knees diverge the way they do

Patellar luxation — the kneecap sliding out of its groove — is a structural issue built into how many toy breeds are put together, with shallow femoral grooves and looser stabilizing ligaments. It shows up in both Yorkies and Maltese, but the Science for Animal Welfare resource on the Yorkshire Terrier notes the condition is common enough in the breed to be considered a defining risk, not an occasional finding. Mild grade-one luxations often look like nothing more than an odd skip-step; the dog hops, then carries on. It’s the moderate and severe grades that matter, because repeated slipping grinds cartilage and seeds arthritis years before an owner would otherwise expect it.

This is exactly what happened with Pixel. Her owner had normalized the skip for years because it never looked painful in the moment. It’s a pattern I see constantly in my practice: owners judge joint problems by whether the dog yelps, when the more honest marker is whether the gait pattern is consistent. A dog that skips the same way every time, on the same leg, after the same activity, is telling you something specific — even if she never once cries out.

Why the mouth fails first in the Maltese

Maltese dogs carry their own structural disadvantage, and it’s dental. A large-scale WALTHAM review of periodontal disease across more than three million US dogs found that extra-small breeds under roughly 14 pounds were up to five times more likely to be diagnosed with periodontal disease than giant breeds, largely because small mouths pack proportionally oversized teeth into less jawbone, crowding them and accelerating plaque buildup. The WALTHAM data doesn’t single out the Maltese by name in its top-five list, but the mechanism it describes — overcrowded teeth, less alveolar bone relative to tooth size — applies squarely to the breed’s compact skull.

Biscuit’s case is the version I see over and over: an owner who brushes their own teeth twice daily and never thought to do the same for the dog, because nothing looked obviously wrong until the smell did. By the time bad breath is noticeable, there’s usually already bone loss underneath the gumline. That’s the counterargument to picking Maltese as the “lower-maintenance” toy breed: dental disease is largely preventable with weekly brushing and routine cleanings, but it requires consistency most owners underestimate, and untreated periodontal disease doesn’t stay confined to the mouth — it’s a chronic low-grade inflammatory burden on the rest of an aging dog’s system.

What each breed’s aging profile means in the exam room

Both breeds also carry secondary risks worth naming honestly. Yorkies have an elevated rate of portosystemic liver shunts, where blood bypasses the liver’s detox function, typically showing up as poor growth or neurologic symptoms in puppies rather than seniors. Maltese puppies and very senior Maltese are prone to hypoglycemia because they carry so little fat reserve — a genuinely short sentence of a fact, but an important one for owners feeding on an irregular schedule. Heart valve disease also runs disproportionately in aging Maltese, which is part of why routine senior bloodwork and auscultation matter as much as the coat brushing everyone already expects to do.

I’ve watched owners choose between these two breeds based entirely on coat texture or face shape, and I understand the appeal — they’re both charming, portable, affectionate dogs built for a lap rather than a job. But the decision that actually determines your years ten through fifteen isn’t cosmetic. It’s whether you’ll commit to joint-conscious handling — no unsupported jumping off furniture, weight kept lean, ramps instead of stairs — or to a genuine dental routine. Committing to neither leaves you managing both problems late and reactively, which is the scenario I’d most like clients to avoid. For context on how structural risk plays out differently across other breed pairings, our comparisons of French Bulldog vs Boston Terrier and German Shepherd vs Belgian Malinois walk through the same kind of tradeoff in larger dogs.

What I actually tell owners choosing between them

Ask yourself which maintenance task you’ll do without fail — brushing teeth several times a week, or keeping a dog lean and off furniture edges — and pick accordingly, because consistency matters more than which breed you choose. If you already own a Yorkie or Maltese, the more useful question isn’t “which breed is healthier” but “which of these known risks am I currently ignoring.” For Yorkie owners, that’s usually gait monitoring. For Maltese owners, it’s usually the toothbrush. Owners weighing other low-shedding, low-drama companions may also find our guide to low-maintenance dog breeds useful, and if the coat question specifically is what’s driving your decision, the genetics behind Goldendoodle shedding explain why “hypoallergenic” claims deserve scrutiny in small breeds too, though that’s a different coat biology than either Yorkie or Maltese carry.

The Maltese I’d expect to reach 14 or 15 years with a maintained mouth and a monitored heart. The Yorkie I’d expect to reach a similar age with maintained joints and, in a smaller fraction of cases, a managed liver shunt caught early. Neither timeline is guaranteed by breed alone — it’s determined by what you do starting now, not what you do once symptoms show up.

Next step: if you already share your life with one of these breeds, book a baseline orthopedic and dental exam before symptoms appear, not after — early patellar grading and a dental staging photo give you a real number to track instead of a guess.