More About Portuguese Water Dogs

Porties are adventurous, athletic and very loving. Affectionately known as "velcro dogs," they want to be where ever their people are. They are very intelligent and easy to train if you put the time in. On the other side of that coin, their intelligence can get you into trouble if you aren't prepared to spend some time training them. They excel at agility, obedience, and water trials. Porties have also made excellent scent-work dogs, therapy dogs and dock divers! If you don't intend on giving your portie a formal job, they still make  excellent companions for hiking, jogging, horseback riding, swimming and bike riding. PWDs in general don't do well as couch potatoes. Without an outlet for their energy they can become furry little troublemakers. 

"The first account of a Portuguese Water Dog was in 1297 when a monk reported a dying sailor who had been rescued from the sea with a dog with a ‘black coat of rough hair, cut to the first rib and with a tuft on the tip of his tail’."

-Source 

Porties were valued crew members on fishing vessels. Their webbed feet make them excellent swimmers, which made them useful to the fisherman by carrying messages between boats, retrieving broken nets, and even herding fish into nets! They were crew members and actually earned a salary. Other duties included retrieving overboard items, and guarding the vessel, nets, and catch while in port.

Porties have a beautiful hypoallergenic coat that requires regular grooming to stay tangle free. They don't shed in the traditional sense like the majority of dog breeds. Instead, their hair continues to grow long, and they will only lose a random hair here and there (similar to human hair and what comes out when you brush or wash). 

PWD coats come in two varieties,  wavy and curly. The curly coat is coarser and maintains a tight curl, similar to a poodle. The wavy coat is soft and lustrous, with anywhere from a loose to medium wave.  Kody and Bailey are both wavy coated, and all 8 pups from our current litter are wavy.  Curlies are shown in a retriever clip (one inch length all over the body). Wavy coats are shown in a lion cut, with the hair left long and flowing everywhere except the muzzle and hindquarters, which are shaved to the skin. The purpose of this cut was to keep the body warm, while removing some of the weight of heavy wet hair from the powerful hindquarters, to facilitate swimming.

When out walking in public porties are often mistaken for a "doodle" of some variety. While they do have poodle in their ancestors, PWDs are a pure breed that dates back centuries. 

The nice thing about a Portie coat, as opposed to that of a doodle, is that your Portie is guaranteed to have a low/non-shedding coat. Contrary to popular belief, doodles often are heavy shedders. Most of the tighter curly doodles are low shedders, but quite a few inherit the shedding gene from their non-poodle parent. 

 Expect to budget for monthly trips to the dog groomer, unless you plan to groom at home. Grooming prices vary by location, but as a quick example, the local Petsmart charges $44 for a bath, brush, and nail trim on a Portie. A full haircut with the bath, brush, and nails is $77.

As your breeder (and a professional dog groomer by trade), I am happy to teach you how to groom your Portie at home, if that's something you're interested in doing! While I am currently a stay at home mom without a professional salon setup, I continue to groom my own dogs at home. If you live locally and you buy a puppy from Autumn Branch, I would be happy to become your regular groomer at a discounted rate.  

Like all purebred dogs, there are certain health issues prevalent within the breed. The PWDCA (Portuguese Water Dog Club of America) recommends genetic testing for the following afflictions:

GM-1 Storage Disease (Gangliosidosis)*

Juvenile Dilated Cardiomyopathy (JDCM)

Microphthalmia Syndrome (MO)

Progressive Retinal Atrophy (prcd-PRA)*

We have tested for all of these, as well as 268 other genetic diseases. Feel free to contact us for copies of our health clearances. 

Bailey will be getting her final OFA hip tests in 2024 but based on her parentage we have no reason to believe she will not get good results. Kody also has excellent OFA hips in his bloodline.

Have questions or want to learn more about our puppies? Contact us today and we'll be happy to help. We're passionate about connecting our puppies with loving families and look forward to hearing from you!