Maltese Puppies

Two thousand years on a Mediterranean island

The Maltese takes its name from Malta, the island sitting in the middle of the Mediterranean, and the breed was already well established there when the classical world started writing things down. Small white companion dogs turn up in Greek and Roman art. Aristotle described a little dog he called the Melitaean, Melita being the old name for the island. Two thousand years is the conservative estimate, and it may well be longer.

Malta sat on the trade routes between three continents, which is how a small white dog with no job beyond good company came to be everywhere. Phoenician traders are usually credited with bringing the ancestors in, and centuries of sailors carried their descendants back out again.

By the Renaissance the breed was a fixture in the courts of Europe. It reached England in the sixteenth century, where Queen Elizabeth I and Mary, Queen of Scots both kept them, and it arrived in the United States in the late 1800s. The American Kennel Club recognized the Maltese in 1888.

What is striking is how little has changed. Set a Maltese today beside one painted four hundred years ago and you are looking at the same animal: small, white, long-coated, and positioned where it can see everything that is going on.

Under seven pounds, and all of it dog

A Maltese is a genuinely small animal and the standard is specific about it. Adults stand around seven to nine inches at the shoulder and weigh under seven pounds, with four to six pounds preferred. That is simply how big the breed is, and it has been that size for a very long time.

Underneath the coat is a compact, level-backed dog with rather more substance than people expect from the photographs. The skull is slightly rounded on top, the muzzle fine and gently tapering, the nose black. The eyes are very dark, round, and set in dark rims, and the pigment around them gives the breed its wide-awake expression — owners tend to call it the halo. The ears drop and are heavily feathered. The tail is a long plume carried gracefully over the back, and it moves when the dog does.

The colour is pure white. A little lemon or light tan shading on the ears turns up now and again and spoils nothing, but white is what the breed is for and white is what almost every puppy in the pen will be.

One coat, floor length or trimmed short

The coat is the headline, and it is built differently from most. A Maltese has a single coat — one layer of long, flat, silky hair, with no woolly undercoat beneath it. There is no kink, no curl and no fluff anywhere in it. Left to grow, it hangs straight to the floor on either side of a part that runs from the base of the skull to the root of the tail, and a Maltese in full coat crossing a room looks as though it is travelling on rails.

Because there is no undercoat pushing hair out, very little of it comes away. The coat behaves more like human hair than like fur: it keeps growing, and what it wants is combing.

Almost nobody living with a Maltese keeps it at floor length, and there is no need to. Most owners settle on a short, even trim, usually called a puppy cut, which suits the dog, suits the weather here, and turns grooming into a small daily habit rather than a project. The hair on top of the head grows long whichever route you take, and it either goes up in a topknot with a small band or gets trimmed back out of the way. Both look right, and it is the kind of decision you can revisit every few months.

Grooming, week by week

A long coat wants a comb through every day, worked in sections from the skin outward with a pin brush and then finished with a metal comb. A puppy cut wants the same treatment every couple of days and takes about five minutes. Either way it becomes one of those things you do while the kettle boils.

Baths come round every week or two, with a conditioner, and the coat gets combed as it dries so that it lies flat and keeps its shine. Most owners book a groomer every six to eight weeks for a trim and a tidy around the feet, the ears and the rear.

The rest is quick. The face gets a wipe with a soft damp cloth in the morning, which keeps the white looking white and gives you a moment of handling into the bargain. Ears get a wipe while you are already combing. Nails grow fast on a dog this light, so trim a little and often rather than saving it up. Teeth are worth brushing from the first week, so that a puppy files the toothbrush under ordinary events.

Start all of it in the first fortnight, in ten-second instalments with something good afterwards, and you end up with a dog that arranges itself on the table and falls asleep partway through.

Bright, affectionate and thoroughly involved

Under all that hair is a lively, confident, thoroughly companionable little dog. The Maltese was bred for exactly one purpose — to be somebody’s company — and two thousand years of selecting for it show. A Maltese wants to be with you, on you, or at minimum in the same room with a clear line of sight to whatever you are doing.

They stay playful well into old age. A Maltese will chase a rolled sock down a hallway with total commitment, bring it back, and expect the entire performance to happen again. They are quick, funny and faintly theatrical, and they very much enjoy an audience.

They are alert, too. A Maltese notices the front door before you do and mentions it. Go and look together, thank the dog, carry on with the evening, and the whole business stays brief.

With their own people they are affectionate in a permanent, physical way: on the lap, along the thigh, tucked in against a shoulder. They are excellent company for adults, a great deal of fun for older children who like a dog with opinions, and generally easy with other dogs and with cats they have grown up beside.

Training and a day with a Maltese

Maltese are clever and they like getting things right, which makes them very good pupils for anyone who pays properly. Food works, praise works, and a squeaky toy works better than either on some days. Keep sessions to two or three minutes, ask for one thing at a time, mark the behaviour the instant it happens, and stop while the dog still wants another go.

Two things repay real attention early. The first is house training, which goes best when it is predictable and slightly boring: outside first thing, after meals, after naps, after play, and a proper celebration every single time it goes right outdoors. The second is handling — the comb, the feet, the ears, being picked up and put down — because a puppy that enjoys the grooming routine makes the following fifteen years easy.

Socialization fills the rest of the first year. Different floors, umbrellas, wheeled bins, hats, calm adult dogs going about their business. A puppy that has taken a hundred ordinary things in its stride before six months is unbothered by the hundred and first.

The day itself has a shape to it. Two short walks, taken for the news rather than the distance, and in a Florida or Tennessee summer taken early and late with a shaded route worth the detour. The middle of the day is for finding a patch of sun and lying in it. Five minutes of hallway fetch does as much for a dog this size as a long march. Evenings are the main event: this is a lap dog by two thousand years of tradition and by strong personal preference, and a Maltese that has walked, played and been included spends the evening tucked against somebody with one ear still up.

Come and meet the Maltese puppies

Photographs of a Maltese are mostly coat. Standing next to one, what you notice is the manner — how fast it decides you are worth knowing, how it plants itself in front of you and waits to be picked up, and how much actual dog there turns out to be under the hair.

Our Maltese puppies come from our network of licensed breeders, and our team can tell you how a particular puppy has been getting on with people. We have a store in Orlando and one in Nashville, and you are welcome to sit on the floor with a puppy for as long as you like before deciding anything. Find directions and hours, and ask about financing while you are here. Every puppy here goes home with its vet records, its vaccination history and a health warranty, and our team will walk you through what those cover.