Portuguese Pointer

The Portuguese Pointer descended from the old indigenous Iberian hunting dog, known in Portugal with the same morphology and function until today and at least since the tenth century. The same square head with convergent axes and marked stop, same ears, same body, sometimes docked tail, especially since the seventeenth century, with always the same hunting scenes, almost always represented at point, sometimes stretched at the end of a leash, and all of this for 1,000 years... Used for feather hunting with nets, and also for marking and retrieving wounded game, it was first raised in royal kennels or those of nobility. Its image can be found almost everywhere, in stone plaques (Tomar, tenth century), Portuguese bibles (Coimbra and Porto), glazed tiles (Estremoz and Lisbon), as well as in paintings. In the sixteenth century its use spread among the common classes, and its excellent hunting qualities developed to the detriment of the interests of the seigniorial class, to the point that the Lisbon Hunting Reserve Regulations severely punished those who owned these dogs. In the eighteenth century, the English colony that trades in Port wine discovers this dog in the north of the country and ships numerous Portuguese Pointers to England, which form the basis of the Pointer (Cynographia Britannica, 1800). Indeed, in the history of hunting dogs one can find only two breeds with convergence of the skull and muzzle axes and a similar head, in the Portuguese Pointer (oldest breed) and in the Pointer, a breed described only since the eighteenth century. In the last years of the nineteenth century, a difficult period in Portuguese social life, when triumphant liberalism introduced different ideas and tastes imported from outside, the breed declined. However, at the beginning of the twentieth century, some breeders endeavored to recover the Portuguese Pointer from subjects considered typical in the north of the country, with a book of origins existing since 1932, and the first standard written in 1931 and accepted in 1938.

The Portuguese Pointer is described in the FCI standard as gentle and affectionate, rustic and capable of great endurance and great devotion. It is calm and sociable, but can be distant with other dogs.

The Portuguese Pointer is a medium-lined pointer of harmonious and well-constituted appearance. The tail is generally docked by one third when tail docking is authorized by legislation. Whole, it does not exceed the hock. The head is covered with loose, fine skin without wrinkles. The superior longitudinal craniofacial axes are convergent. The ears of medium length are thin, flexible, and covered with fine and dense hair. Darker brown than the coat color, the eyes are almost round oval in shape. The coat is short, strong, well-laid, and dense, without undercoat. It is shorter and softer on the head and especially on the ears. At the armpits, in the groin folds, on the anal and genital regions, the coat is sparser and soft. The coat colors are yellow and brown, unicolor or marked with white.