Why Your Dog Needs ‘Portuguese Water Dog’ Puppy Training

Dog lovers may find it interesting that the Portuguese Water Dog has already been known in Portugal for centuries, but not precisely for its supposedly non-allergenic coat. The truth is, the breed has been a multi-talented assistant to the angler. Trying to remove the older origins of the Portie is a shady business indeed, but it is quite close in the bloodline to other European water dog breeds. Some of these dogs are experts and masters when it comes to waterfowl recovery, but Portie’s genius was meant for other specialties. Some suggested that the Portuguese water dog was brought to Portugal by the Visigoths, around the 15th century.

To be an effective PWD back then, the dog in question needed to be adept at the following: herding fish in nets; courier message; working as a lookout; move and recover networks; as well as the rescue of capsized fishermen.

If we were to go back to the Middle Ages and pay a visit to the Algarve on the south coast of Portugal, we might catch a glimpse of the PCD at work in their element. In the midst of a small fleet of fishing boats, a Portuguese Water Dog is sure to be found, passing and relaying information from boat to boat, keeping a keen eye on the water to help spot a school of fish, and testing himself. he uses his unique repertoire of barks and sighs to find safe passage through the mist. In its native country, the dog is known as the Cao de Agua, or “water dog.”

But there really are some elements that even regular training of Portuguese Water Dog puppies cannot solve. By the first decades of the 20th century, traditional fishing methods were already being superseded and updated, and the Portuguese Water Dog was seen less and less among fishing boats. But in a stroke of luck for the breed, Vasco Bensuade, a wealthy Portuguese maritime merchant and dog lover, took a liking to the breed and bought a PWD named Leao (lion).

Eventually, Bensaude’s dog, Leao, became the founding father of the kennel he set up to stabilize the Portuguese Water Dog breed in Algarbiorum. As for Leao, he became the ideal example on which the Portie breed was soon modeled. In short, it is largely thanks to Vasco Bensuade that we can have Portuguese Water Dogs as pets. It is also thanks to these early efforts that, a year later, a breed standard was made public, the breed was increasingly seen in dog shows, and as a result, there is an increased demand for training Portuguese Water Dog puppies.