Spanish Water Dog

The Spanish Water Dog, or Perro de Agua Español, is a curly-coated water dog from Spain. It traditionally did several jobs: herding sheep and cattle, finding and retrieving game in marshland, and helping inshore fishermen on the Cantabrian coast. Today it is kept mainly as a companion.

History

The Perro de Agua is a traditional dog population of Spain that was always less numerous than some other Spanish dogs. Numbers are thought to have held steady until the 1970s and 1980s, when changes in farming and fishing caused a sharp fall and the dogs were considered at risk of extinction. No scientific study had been made of them before then. One was carried out in the province of Malaga in the 1980s, and researchers at the University of Córdoba did further work in the 1990s.

These studies identified three groups that differed in size and in the spread of coat colors, though their heads were alike: the Marismeño, or marsh dog, from the marshes at the mouth of the Guadalquivir in western Andalusia; the Serrano, or sierra dog, of southern Andalusia; and the smaller Norteño, or northern dog, of Cantabria and Asturias.

The Spanish kennel club, the Real Sociedad Canina de España, recognized the breed in 1975. The FCI definitively accepted it in 1999, and Spanish law recognized it by royal decree in 2001. In 2012 the northern group was recognized in Spanish law as a separate breed, the Cantabrian Water Dog.

Appearance

The Spanish Water Dog is medium-sized, athletic and robust, and slightly longer than it is tall. Males stand about 44 to 50 cm at the withers and weigh 18 to 22 kg. Females stand 40 to 45 cm and weigh 14 to 18 kg. About half are born with a naturally short tail.

The head is strong, with a flat skull, triangular ears set at medium height and eyes set fairly wide apart. The eyes are hazel, chestnut or dark brown depending on coat color. The nose, eye rims and paw pads match the darkest part of the coat or are darker.

The coat is curly and woolly and may form cords when it grows long. It may be solid black, beige, brown or white, any of these with white, or particolor. Tricolored dogs and black-and-tan or brown-and-tan dogs are not allowed under the international standard.

Care and health

Life expectancy is thought to be about 14 years. Health testing has found hip dysplasia, progressive retinal atrophy, cataracts, distichia, cherry eye, hypothyroidism, including a congenital form with goiter, Addison’s disease, exocrine pancreatic insufficiency, allergies and neuroaxonal dystrophy in the breed.

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