Italian Greyhound

The Italian Greyhound, or Piccolo Levriero Italiano, is a small Italian sighthound. It was bred to hunt hare and rabbit and can reach about 60 km/h (35 mph) in short bursts, but it has long been kept mostly as a companion. The Fédération Cynologique Internationale calls it the Italian Sighthound.

History

Small sighthounds have been popular with Europe’s nobility and royalty for centuries. Those believed to have kept them include the Medici, Este and Visconti families, several French kings, Frederick the Great, Catherine the Great and Queen Victoria. Dogs of this type appear in a second-century Roman statue in the Vatican Museums and in paintings by Giotto, Sassetta and Tiepolo.

They were taken to the United Kingdom in the first half of the nineteenth century, where they became known as Italian Greyhounds. The first Kennel Club stud book, published in 1874, lists forty of them, and a British breed club was founded in 1900. The American Kennel Club began registering them in 1886.

In Italy the modern breed dates from the last years of the nineteenth century, when only a handful were shown. Numbers grew after the First World War through the work of breeders such as Emilio Cavallini and Giulia Ajò Montecuccoli degli Erri. The Second World War brought the breed close to extinction; recovery began in the 1950s, helped by an influential bitch imported from Austria in 1951. The FCI gave the breed full acceptance in October 1956, and an Italian breed society was founded the following month. Between 2011 and 2019 Italy registered between 213 and 333 new dogs a year.

Appearance

The Italian Greyhound weighs no more than 5 kg and stands 32 to 38 cm at the withers. It has a deep chest, a tucked-up belly, long slender legs and a long neck, with a small, narrow, elongated head. Its gait is high-stepping and springy, and it gallops fast. The coat may be solid black, or any shade of gray or isabelline. White is accepted only on the chest and feet.

The FCI and the Italian kennel club class it with the sighthounds; the AKC and The Kennel Club class it as a toy breed.

Care and health

Median longevity is about 14 years. The breed can be affected by inherited neurological problems, including congenital deafness and cervical intervertebral disc disease. In the United States, the Orthopedic Foundation for Animals found it the least affected by hip dysplasia of 157 breeds studied.

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