Australian Cattle Dog vs Portuguese Water Dog — Side by Side

	Australian Cattle Dog	Portuguese Water Dog
Lifespan	12-15 years	12-15 years
Size	Medium	Medium
Weight	30-50 lb	35-60 lb
Energy	Very high	High
Grooming	Low	High
Shedding	High	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 Australian Cattle Dog.
Less brushing with the Australian Cattle Dog. More with the Portuguese Water Dog.
Calmer of the two is the Portuguese Water Dog. The one that needs more exercise is the Australian Cattle Dog.
With young children, Portuguese Water Dog is the safer default — Australian Cattle Dog is listed as "With supervision".

The honest downside of each

Australian Cattle Dog

This dog was bred to nip the heels of running cattle all day, and a bored, under-exercised Cattle Dog will redirect that instinct onto joggers, bicycles, other pets, and children's ankles — it is not a mellow companion breed no matter how it looks in photos.

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

Australian Cattle Dog · Portuguese Water Dog
Health problems, origin and what living with each is actually like.