Get to know your
Maltese.

What is inside the Maltese

This edition combines three parts in one file. The total page count includes general content, the breed-specific section and the planner; it does not refer only to breed-specific text.

1. General foundations

A reading foundation covering home preparation, everyday care, nutrition, training and life together. These chapters are shared across the collection and provide context before the breed-specific section.

2. A section devoted to the Maltese

History, profile and breed-specific care topics organized into ten chapters. Browse the list below and read a short history excerpt to get a feel for the writing style.

3. Printable planner

Pages for your records, details, dates and memories within the same PDF. Print only the sheets you need. This is not an app, and fillable form fields are not advertised.

Your breed-specific chapters

1. Breed history and origins
2. Breed profile and characteristics
3. Health predispositions discussed in the guide
4. Feeding by life stage
5. Energy and activity
6. Temperament and life together
7. Physical care and coat
8. Care calendar
9. Observations organized by body area
10. Training and socialization

A short excerpt to begin

From the history chapter in this edition: a short reading sample.

Few breeds carry an origin story as ancient and genuinely documented as the Maltese. The breed takes its name from the island of Malta, strategically positioned at the crossroads of Mediterranean trade routes, though modern scholarship — including the FCI's own breed standard, which attributes origin to Italy — acknowledges that the precise cradle of the breed remains debated. What is beyond dispute is the antiquity: small white dogs unmistakably resembling the Maltese appear on Greek pottery and tomb carvings dating to the 5th century BCE, and the philosopher Aristotle, writing around 350 BCE, described a small dog he called 'perfectly proportioned despite its small size' — one of the earliest named references to a toy dog in Western literature.

Excerpt from chapter 20 · History and origins