Rafeiro do Alentejo

The Rafeiro do Alentejo is a large flock guardian from Portugal, named after the Alentejo region in the south of the country where it comes from. Its traditional work was protecting flocks kept on open land from predators.

History

Dogs of this type guarded the flocks on the twice-yearly move between high mountain pastures in summer and the lowlands in winter. They were also used to hunt large game, and old photographs show them in the hunting packs of King Carlos I, who had a palace in Alentejo. The name Rafeiro do Alentejo came into use in the late nineteenth century. The first breed standard dates from 1953, and the Fédération Cynologique Internationale accepted the breed the following year.

In the 1970s many Portuguese left the countryside for towns and cities, and pastoral farming shrank quickly. Guardian dogs were no longer needed, and by the early 1980s the Rafeiro was close to extinction, with only a few dogs left in the hands of a small group of breeders. A breed club, the Associação dos Criadores do Rafeiro do Alentejo, was founded in Monforte in 1994 as the successor to an earlier club, and together with the town council it set up a breeding center there. In 2006 there were 1,165 bitches in the studbook. The dogs are found across the historic Alentejo, apart from the areas nearest the Atlantic coast.

Today the Rafeiro guards farms and other property as well as flocks, and is also kept as a companion.

A Rafeiro named Bobi was named by Guinness World Records as the oldest dog ever, with a claimed age of more than 31 years when he died in October 2023. Veterinarians doubted the claim. Guinness investigated, found too little evidence of his age and annulled the records.

Appearance

The Rafeiro is a large dog, slightly longer than it is tall, with a broad chest and a massive head. The eyes are small and dark, and the ears are small, triangular and hanging. Males stand 66 to 74 cm (26 to 29 in) and weigh 45 to 60 kg (99 to 132 lb). Females stand 64 to 70 cm (25 to 28 in) and weigh 35 to 50 kg (77 to 110 lb).

The coat is straight and dense, short or of medium length, and not as thick as that of some other pastoral dogs. It may be black, fawn, wolf gray or yellow, brindled or not, always with white markings, or white marked with those colors.

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