Portuguese Water Dog

Energetic and family-minded, with a love of water.
A Portuguese Water Dog
Photo: Silke Hollje-Schumacher
Adult male
19–25 kg
42–55 lb
Adult female
16–22 kg
35–49 lb
Lifespan
13 yrs
Class · Sport
also Family, Working

What it's like

In temperament it is energetic and intelligent, with a strong liking for water and a close attachment to its family. It learns quickly but can be independent-minded, and its working background still shows in its stamina and readiness to swim and retrieve.

Day to day
Activity
Needs lots of exercise
Intelligence
Needs daily brain work
Handler demand
Needs an experienced owner
With people
Affection
Affectionate on its own terms
Loyalty
Bonded to its family
Independence
Keen to work with you
Around the home
Sensitivity
Average
Voice
Barks to alert, then settles
Prey drive
Chases; needs managing
Breed explains only about 9% of how individual dogs differ in behaviour1. Meet the dog. A good breeder breeds for temperament as well as health, and matches each puppy's personality to the right home2,3.
Is a Portuguese Water Dog right for you?
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Living with one

How it sheds and the grooming it needs depend on the coat. It needs plenty of exercise compared with other breeds.

Size and growth

A Portuguese Water Dog is a medium dog, heavier than a Border Collie and lighter than a Golden Retriever. Males end up clearly heavier than females.

It is a sturdy, muscular dog with webbed feet, a broad head and a thick-based tail carried high in action. The single coat has no undercoat and comes either in tight curls or in looser waves. It is black, brown or white, often with white markings on the darker colours. It is shown in the lion clip, with the middle, hindquarters and muzzle clipped and a plume left at the tip of the tail, or in a shorter, even retriever clip.

Two types

The growth curve, the weight table and the size class on this page use the UK / FCI type's weights.

UK / FCI type

FCI 37
Adult weight
Males
19–25 kg
Females
16–22 kg4
Height at the withers
Males
50–57 cm
Females
43–52 cm4
Its weights are the ones used on this page.

American type

AKC standard
Adult weight
Males
19–27 kg
Females
16–23 kg5
Height at the withers
Males
50.8–58.4 cm
Females
43.2–53.3 cm5
Its weights are not the ones this page uses.

Puppy growth

Reference curve · community data appears as owners log
By about 3 months, a male Portuguese Water Dog puppy is already as heavy as a grown Cavalier King Charles Spaniel. They grow fastest between 3 and 4 months old.
Fully grown
11 mo
Both sexes, at 99% of adult weight7
Male
Female
Shaded: expected range
01020302m4m6m9m12m18m
01020302m3m4m6m9m12m18m
Age
Male
Female
2 months
4.1–5.4 kg 9.0–11.9 lb
3.8–5.3 kg 8.4–11.7 lb
3 months
6.1–8.0 kg 13.4–17.6 lb
5.5–7.5 kg 12.1–16.5 lb
4 months
8.8–11.6 kg 19.4–25.6 lb
7.8–10.7 kg 17.2–23.6 lb
5 months
11.4–14.9 kg 25.1–32.8 lb
9.9–13.6 kg 21.8–30.0 lb
6 months
13.6–17.8 kg 30.0–39.2 lb
11.6–15.9 kg 25.6–35.1 lb
7 months
15.2–20.0 kg 33.5–44.1 lb
12.8–17.6 kg 28.2–38.8 lb
8 months
16.4–21.6 kg 36.2–47.6 lb
13.7–18.8 kg 30.2–41.4 lb
9 months
17.2–22.7 kg 37.9–50.0 lb
14.3–19.7 kg 31.5–43.4 lb
10 months
17.7–23.4 kg 39.0–51.6 lb
14.8–20.3 kg 32.6–44.8 lb
11 months
18.1–23.9 kg 39.9–52.7 lb
15.1–20.7 kg 33.3–45.6 lb
12 months
18.4–24.2 kg 40.6–53.4 lb
15.3–21.1 kg 33.7–46.5 lb
15 months
18.9–24.8 kg 41.7–54.7 lb
15.8–21.7 kg 34.8–47.8 lb

Lifespan

In UK vet records, the typical Portuguese Water Dog lived to about 13 years, about average for a medium breed. The group was small, so treat the figure as rough.

Where it comes from

The Portuguese Water Dog once worked all round Portugal's coast, but changes in fishing left most of them in the Algarve, now treated as its home. It drove fish into nets, fetched lost nets and carried messages between boats, and is said to have barked as a foghorn. Once modern boats made it redundant, numbers collapsed in the 1950s and 1960s, and it survives as a family dog4,9.

The Portuguese Water Dog owes its survival largely to Vasco Bensaude, a Portuguese shipping magnate who began collecting and breeding the remaining dogs in the nineteen-thirties. His kennel, built around a fisherman's dog named Leão, supplied the foundation stock, and a breed standard was drawn up in Portugal in the same decade. Enthusiasts in the United States took up the breed in the later twentieth century, and it drew wider attention when the Obama family brought one to the White House.

Breed standard

The American standard asks for a heavier dog than the UK and international ones.

Questions people ask

General guidance for dogs rather than a measured Portuguese Water Dog figure: most females have a first season somewhere between six and fifteen months, and cycles then settle to roughly every 180 days. Smaller breeds tend to start earlier and larger ones later, so a medium-sized breed is most likely somewhere in the middle.

Compare with related

Lagotto Romagnolo
Retrievers & water dogs · Medium
Poodle (Standard)
Companion & toy · Medium
Irish Water Spaniel
Retrievers & water dogs · Medium
Welsh Springer Spaniel
Retrievers & water dogs · Medium
Or compare the Portuguese Water Dog with any breed you choose
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Sources

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Parts of this page were written by AI ·