We find our porties to be very intelligent, funny, willing to learn and to have a very strong bond with us. They love children and offer them toys all the time. They are really smart, expert manipulators and like to organize themselves – be it entertainment or “loot”. Leaving the kitchen unattended is a bad idea in our eyes (the dogs love to see it). They excel on the training field, pass their exams with ease and joy. That doesn’t mean, though, that the abilities they mastered there are always successful part of our daily life together. They love variety, also in their tasks. Always the same training exercises quickly bore them. They are generally well-suited for different therapeutic tasks.
They love the water, (almost all) swimming, diving and retrieving. Some of them even give up their prey again.
We keep hearing about porties who keep their distance to strangers. Ours don’t show this behavior at all. On the contrary, they are fierce cuddlers. It’s important to introduce them to “mild stress” in the socialisation phase, e.g. taking the dog with you early on, showing it the world, leading it to various things – all within limits. As the old saying goes: you can’t teach an old dog new tricks.
Our dogs are very alert – nobody can enter the house without a comment from them. They do share the work though: some bark, others don’t. They usually get along very well with other dogs. It does make a difference, though, whether they are on their own or in the pack. Within the pack there are barely any conflicts (for now). We hope it stays that way.
They become active very quickly but if there is nothing of interest happening or the originally interesting thing goes on for a while, then they withdraw and become calm again just as quickly. Despite their joy in activities, they also love to laze around on the couch, especially in bad weather.
There are general descriptions of the race e.g. on wikipedia. There are of course traits that are breed-specific, but each dog is an individual and even litter siblings can be very different from each other.