A Portuguese Water Dog Puppy that’s a Pet used to cost $1800. With the Obama’s dog Bo arriving at the White House we’ve not seen any for sale at less than $2900. We expect that the price will go to $4000 and even $8000 . Breeders of this dog are most selective of who they sell to. The breeding is a complicated science.

Show quality dogs should be $5000 to $14000.  If it is a “champion” the price should be over $25,000.

The care of this breed is a substantive cost. They need grooming as puppies every 4 weeks, and as adults every 7 weeks.  This costs $89 up per visit.

They require high protein food such as frozen raw meat patties. My dog can’t be bribed with treatstrained with treats], in fact I haven’t met any PWD’s that can be taught with treat. But that just means you need betterfood. I recently gave Goji a can of Evanger’s dog food. It is high quality, human grade meat, and it’s even Kosher? Yet Goji rejected it, I do not know what he was thinking. Yes he adores dried Kangaroo meat. Now that’s expensive food, about $35/pound. He also likes chicken covered pig ears.

A trip to PetSmart can easily cost $100. I listed a average shopping trip for Portugese Water Dog in another post. They do not like regular tennis balls much, they like fancy multi colored PetSmart tennis balls (recommended). They like high quality treats like dried liver wrapped in bacon, “blue” biscuits, and anything liver. If you give them too much protein they get very high energywild|hyperactive], if tooTiny they get obviously too sleepy, 20% protein content is best.

Since this breed is designed to be a part of the crew of a fishing boat, he needs constant human companionship. As such, it isn’t good to leave him for more than 3 or 4 hours. And that doesn’t mean somebody can show up for ten minutes and leave, it means they must be around humans pretty much all the time. Also, they want to be around other dogs, and preferably other PWD’s. So what does this mean about cost? It means  play-dates with other Portugus Water Dogs, and lacking that constant trips to dog parks, walks, runs, outings, adventures, play, swimming, fetching, fighting, and mouthing. The cost part comes in Doggie Day Care. They play so hard at Day Care that the bonus is he’s tired at night, and slower the next day. Figure $20 to $28/day.

Goji has been very healthy, but the vet maintenance should cost at least $300/year.

Here’s an update. We have recently learnged that a trained portuguese water dog, chocolate brown, sold for $7000. This wasn’t a puppy but an adult male. 12-10-2009