Portuguese Water Dog exercise: swimming and brain work

The Royal Kennel Club lists the Portuguese Water Dog's exercise need as up to an hour a day, less than many owners expect from a working breed. What the breed needs more than long hours is exercise with a job in it. The Kennel Club describes its original work on Portuguese fishing boats: driving shoals of fish into nets, carrying messages between boats, retrieving lost nets, and barking in fog so other boats knew where it was. When modern fishing technology removed that work, the population fell sharply in the 1950s and 1960s, and the breed was rebuilt as a family dog.

Daily exercise at each age

Adults

The Kennel Club's hour a day is a breed guide, and individual dogs vary with age, health and fitness. What matters most is the mix: some free running or swimming, some retrieving, and some training or problem-solving. A dog that gets two hours of walking on a lead and nothing to think about can still be restless in the evening. A dog that swims, retrieves and practices a few commands in forty minutes may settle better.

Puppies

Puppies do best with short, self-directed play rather than set exercise. The best study of early exercise and joints followed 501 puppies of four large breeds in Norway to hip screening. Using stairs in the first three months was linked to a higher risk of hip dysplasia, and off-lead exercise outdoors on soft, moderately rough ground to a lower risk. The breeds studied were larger than a Portuguese Water Dog, so the findings are a guide rather than a rule for this breed. Carrying a young puppy on stairs and letting it play freely outside costs nothing.

We found no published evidence for the popular "five minutes per month of age" rule. Watch the puppy instead: stop when it lags, sits down or starts to get silly and overtired, and give it plenty of sleep.

Adolescents and older dogs

From about six months until the dog is fully grown, build up distance and intensity gradually. Hold off on long runs on hard surfaces until the vet agrees growth is complete. Older dogs usually do well with shorter, more frequent sessions, more swimming and less jumping. A dog that tires early or is stiff after rest needs a check-up rather than simply less exercise.

Swimming

Swimming suits a dog bred to work from boats, and water takes much of the body's weight off the joints, which makes it a useful exercise for dogs with joint disease and for older dogs. Many Portuguese Water Dogs take to water readily, but individual dogs vary, and confidence is built rather than assumed.

• Start in shallow, calm water where the dog can touch the bottom, and let it go deeper at its own pace.
• Use a canine life jacket in open water, currents, cold water or for long sessions, and for any dog that is still learning.
• Check the exit. Steep banks, pool walls and boat sides can trap a tired dog. Teach it where the steps or ramp are.
• Rinse the coat after swimming in chlorinated pools or the sea.

Swallowing too much water

Long retrieving sessions in water carry a risk that is easy to overlook. A dog grabbing toys from the water, or biting at splashes and hose spray, can swallow a large volume of water. A review of hyponatremia in dogs and cats explains that low blood sodium almost always results from an increase in total body water rather than a loss of sodium, and too much water dilutes the blood. Keep retrieving sessions short, use toys the dog can carry with its mouth mostly closed, and take regular breaks on land. Vomiting, a swollen belly, wobbliness, dullness or seizures after a water session need a vet immediately.

Activities on land

• Running. A fully grown, fit dog can make a good running partner. Build distance over weeks, run in the cooler part of the day, and carry water.
• Agility and rally. Both suit an active, trainable dog and add problem-solving to exercise. Full-height jumps are best left until the dog has finished growing.
• Retrieving. Fetch games on land use the same drive as water work. Vary the throws and add simple directions so the dog thinks as well as sprints.
• Hiking. Trails over varied ground work stabilizing muscles and give the dog new smells, and a stream or lake along the way is a bonus.
• Water work and dock diving. Some breed clubs run water trials built around the breed's original boat work, the closest modern match to its job.

Work for the brain

The breed was expected to learn tasks and carry them out at a distance from its handler, and bored dogs of working breeds often find their own entertainment. Short daily sessions of mental work help fill that gap.

• Food puzzles and scatter feeding, using part of the daily ration.
• Search games, hiding treats or a toy around the house or garden.
• Reward-based training of new behaviors and short chains of commands, a few minutes at a time.
• Play with well-matched dogs for a sociable adult.

Inherited conditions that affect exercise

Several inherited diseases in the breed show up as poor exercise tolerance or weakness, sometimes in very young dogs. Knowing them helps an owner recognize when tiredness is more than tiredness.

• Juvenile dilated cardiomyopathy. A heart muscle disease of young puppies. A genetic study of 16 Portuguese Water Dog families carrying the disease found it inherited as an autosomal recessive trait and mapped it to canine chromosome 8. A puppy that tires quickly, breathes fast or with effort, eats poorly or collapses needs a vet the same day.
• GM1 gangliosidosis. An inherited storage disease in which a missing enzyme lets a fatty compound build up in nerve cells. In a comparison of affected Portuguese Water Dogs and English Springer Spaniels, skeletal changes were visible on X-rays at two months and progressive neurological impairment appeared by about four and a half months. The Portuguese Water Dog mutation was identified in 2000, and genotyping distinguished affected dogs, carriers and normal dogs. Ask to see the parents' results.
• Addison's disease. Failure of the adrenal glands to make enough hormones, which can cause weakness, vomiting, diarrhea, poor appetite and collapse, often worse under stress. A genetic analysis in the breed estimated its heritability at 0.49 and found suggestive evidence of a single recessive gene. Signs come and go, so a dog with repeated vague illness or poor stamina should be tested.
• Hip dysplasia. Breeding dogs should have hip scores. A lean body and regular moderate exercise are the best support for a dog with hip disease.

Feeding an active dog

The calorie calculation in the Merck Veterinary Manual is the usual starting point. Resting energy requirement (RER), in kcal per day, is 70 multiplied by body weight in kilograms raised to the power 0.75. A neutered adult dog needs about 1.6 times RER, an intact adult 1.8 times and a dog that gains weight easily 1.4 times. Rounded to the nearest 5 kcal:

A dog that swims or trains hard most days may need more than this, and Merck notes that dogs of the same weight can differ by up to 30%. Adjust by body condition: ribs easy to feel under a thin layer of fat, a visible waist from above and a tuck behind the ribs from the side. The coat hides shape, so feel rather than look, and weigh the dog monthly. Fat supplies more than twice the energy of protein or carbohydrate per gram, so a performance food lets a very active dog meet its needs without a huge volume of food. A complete and balanced food for the dog's life stage covers its nutrient needs, and fresh water should be available before and after exercise.

Sources

1. Portuguese Water Dog breed information. The Royal Kennel Club.
2. Housing- and exercise-related risk factors associated with the development of hip dysplasia as determined by radiographic evaluation in a prospective cohort of Newfoundlands, Labrador Retrievers, Leonbergers, and Irish Wolfhounds in Norway. American Journal of Veterinary Research, 2012.
3. Hyponatremia in dogs and cats. Journal of Veterinary Emergency and Critical Care, 2019.
4. A novel locus for dilated cardiomyopathy maps to canine chromosome 8. Genomics, 2008.
5. Canine GM1-gangliosidosis: a clinical, morphologic, histochemical, and biochemical comparison of two different models. American Journal of Pathology, 1992.
6. Isolation and characterization of the normal canine beta-galactosidase gene and its mutation in a dog model of GM1-gangliosidosis. Journal of Inherited Metabolic Disease, 2000.
7. Genetic evaluation of Addison's disease in the Portuguese Water Dog. BMC Veterinary Research, 2006.
8. Nutritional Requirements of Small Animals. Merck Veterinary Manual, 2023.