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Cao de Água Português
Patronage: Portugal
FCI classification:
FCI Group 8: Retriever dogs – search dogs – water dogs
FCI Section 3: Water Dogs
Without work test
Height at the withers: 43 - 57 cm
Weight: 16 - 29 kg
Life expectancy: 15 years
Colours: Monochrome: brown in different intensities, black, white;
Multicolored: Mixtures of black or brown with white
The Portuguese Water Dog or Cao de Água Português, as it is called in its country of origin, Portugal, is a breed that is over 2000 years old. This breed had almost died out in the 1970s because industrialization meant that they could no longer do their original job as a helper on fishing boats and were no longer needed. Today the Portuguese water dog is widespread again and no longer threatened with extinction. Due to its small number in the last century, the breed was recreated from a very small gene pool and hereditary diseases emerged. No dog needs to have this, as tests have been developed that can determine such diseases and rule them out in further breeding. That's why it's important to choose a breeder who tests their dogs before breeding them. This breed comes in white, black, and various shades of tan, as well as black and tan with white markings. It is an intelligent dog that needs to be encouraged and challenged! He needs consistent training and is a real family dog that should never be kept in a kennel and needs lots of exercise! He enjoys agility, dog dancing and similar things, where he is usually the best in his class in the dog school. Its fur needs a lot of care and can be trimmed in the traditional lion's shearing, i.e. its working suit, whereby the snout and the rear part are cut short except for a flag at the end of the tail. Or you can choose the increasingly widespread retriever cut, which has an approximate length of 3 cm all over the body and a flag is also left here, which is the typical identification mark. The coat itself is found in curly, similar to that of the poodle, to which he passed it on as the cao is the ancestor of the poodle and in wavy. He sheds as much as we humans do and does not change his coat from summer to winter and vice versa, which makes him more suitable for allergy sufferers than other breeds, but here too it must be tested beforehand!
