American Staffordshire Terrier vs Portuguese Water Dog — Side by Side

	American Staffordshire Terrier	Portuguese Water Dog
Lifespan	10-15 years	12-15 years
Size	Medium	Medium
Weight	40-70 lb	35-60 lb
Energy	High	High
Grooming	Low	High
Shedding	Moderate	Low
With kids	With supervision	Good with kids

What actually separates them

Less hair on the sofa with the Portuguese Water Dog. More with the American Staffordshire Terrier.
Less brushing with the American Staffordshire Terrier. More with the Portuguese Water Dog.
With young children, Portuguese Water Dog is the safer default — American Staffordshire Terrier is listed as "With supervision".

The honest downside of each

American Staffordshire Terrier

This breed carries some of the most restrictive breed-specific legislation of any dog worldwide — outright bans or ownership conditions exist in multiple countries and in various US cities and counties — and many landlords and home-insurance policies exclude the breed by name regardless of an individual dog's temperament or training.

Portuguese Water Dog

The low-shedding coat that makes this breed popular with allergy-conscious families comes out of a working gene pool with an unusually high published rate of Addison's disease, plus a fatal storage disease and a fatal juvenile heart defect that only DNA testing catches before it's too late.

Read the full pages

American Staffordshire Terrier · Portuguese Water Dog
Health problems, origin and what living with each is actually like.