They couldn’t be blamed.

Not for being shocked, and not those who doubted them.

When Fru-Fru von Friedheck whelped a litter sired by Darling von Friedheck that included a blue, white, and gold puppy, the breeders were likely floored.  Fru-Fru and Darling were champion blue and tan Yorkshire Terriers that Werner and Gertrude Biewer had bred before.  Their previous litters had never produced a tricolor puppy, and this one seemed to have come out of nowhere. The Biewers had no way of knowing at the time that the puppy they would name Schneeflöckchen (“Snowflake”) was the product of two parents who carried the recessive piebald gene. Born in 1984, Snowflake was the only puppy out of four who had the unusual coloring.

Given that his color was a disqualification, we don’t know why the Biewers chose to breed more Snowflakes other than that they found him exceptionally beautiful and decided to develop a line that consistently produced a tri-colored (piebald) Yorkshire Terrier.  The couple began a carefully selective breeding program with the goal of creating a new line, but most of their fellow Yorkie owners saw Snowflake as a “mismarked” Yorkie. The prevailing belief—even among the Biewers—was that Snowflake was simply the result of a recessive piebald gene occasionally present in Yorkshire Terriers, and certainly not evidence of a different breed. And that might have been the end of it had the Biewers not produced subsequent piebalds that caught the attention of other dog lovers, and in particular, Margot Eskens, a famous German singer who purchased two of these tricolor puppies.

Eskens appeared with her dogs in public appearances and photo shoots, and is credited with coining the term “Biewer Yorkshire à la Pom Pon.” No doubt she brought widespread attention to the new variety, but even that might have been the end of it had interest in the little dogs not grown beyond German borders.  American fanciers imported Biewer Terriers, with Donna Hall credited as the first importer, and as the breed’s popularity grew, so did the need for organization and a breed standard. The Biewer Terrier Club of America was formed in 2006, but despite its official sounding name, there was still significant doubt both in and outside the breed community about whether the Biewer was truly a separate breed or simply a color variant of the Yorkshire Terrier. Who breeds two Yorkies and expects to get an entirely different breed out of them?

It wasn’t an easy time to own a Biewer Terrier.  The dogs were called designer dogs, and their owners mocked. The AKC initially denied breed recognition applications and stated  that it wouldn’t recognize as a breed dogs that were merely a color variant of an existing breed.  Similar attitudes were present in Europe as well.

By 2007, Mars Veterinary’s Wisdom Panel had become a leader in canine genetic testing and possessed one of the largest and most comprehensive databases of purebred dog DNA in the world.  Members of the Biewer Club reached out to Dr. Paul Jones to see if  Mars Veterinary would investigate whether the Biewer Terrier was genetically distinct from the Yorkshire Terrier and put the matter to rest. Owners provided blood samples, and by October 2009, Mars Veterinary had identified genetic markers for the purebred Biewer Terrier after testing over 30 lineages and more than 100 dogs. The pivotal study confirmed the Biewer as a genetically distinct breed—a first in canine history.