General Description

The Spanish Water Dog (perro de agua español) breed is used in Spain as a general purpose sheepdog and guard. It is also used sometimes as a gundog, and is skilled at retrieval from water.

He is a medium size, athletic, robust dog that is slightly longer than tall. Their tails are usually docked in the US, but undocked tails are not a fault in conformation showing if the dog was bred in a non-docking country.

The head should be strong and carried with elegance. The skull is flat and the top is parallel with the top of the muzzle. The nose, eye-rims and paw pads are the same color as the darkest part of the coat or darker. The eyes are expressive and set fairly wide apart. They should be hazel, chestnut or dark brown in color, depending on the coat color. The ears are set at medium height on the skull, and are triangular.

It has a distinctive curly coat which is woolly in texture and may form cords when long. The coat should not be clipped or groomed for aesthetic purposes. Instead, it should look entirely natural, as though it is not groomed at all. It should never be trimmed, but sheared down at least once a year. SWD puppies are always born with curly hair.

The SWD can be seen in a variety of colors. It may be solid black, beige, brown, or white; bicolor where the second color is white; or particolor . Tri-colored dogs are strictly prohibited by the currently held (worldwide) standards for the breed as are black and tan or brown and tan color combinations.