Lagotto Romagnolo

The Lagotto Romagnolo is an Italian dog from the marshlands of the Po delta, in the eastern part of Emilia-Romagna. It was a gundog, and more exactly a water retriever. When much of its wetland home was drained it found a second trade hunting truffles, and today it is also kept as a companion.

History

The Lagotto comes from the once vast marshes and lagoons of the Po delta, around places such as Comacchio and Ravenna in the historical region of Romagna. It has been known since the sixteenth century but did not become widespread until the nineteenth.

Dogs somewhat like the modern Lagotto appear in paintings from northern Italy. One is the small dog behind the legs of Ludovico III Gonzaga in Andrea Mantegna’s fresco in the Camera degli Sposi in Mantua, painted between 1465 and 1474. Another appears almost two hundred years later in Paolo Antonio Barbieri’s portrait of his sister and his brother, the painter Guercino.

The dog’s traditional work was fetching shot game from the water back to dry land or to the hunters’ punts. As large areas of wetland were drained in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, it was used more and more to search for truffles instead.

In the 1970s numbers fell sharply and the breed came close to extinction. A small group of breeders began selective breeding to save the traditional type, and a breed society, the Club Italiano Lagotto, was founded in Imola in 1988. A standard was approved in 1992, when the Italian national kennel club, the ENCI, recognized the breed. The FCI accepted it provisionally in 1995 and fully in 2005. Between 2015 and 2024 the ENCI recorded an average of about 3,500 new registrations a year.

Appearance

The Lagotto is a small to medium dog, powerfully built and rustic in appearance, and rarely over 50 cm (20 in) at the withers. Males stand 43–48 cm (17–19 in) and weigh 13–16 kg (29–35 lb). Females stand 41–46 cm (16–18 in) and weigh 11–14 kg (24–31 lb). The outline is roughly square, the body about as long as the dog is tall.

The coat is thick and wool-like, tightly curled into ringlets. It may be entirely off-white, off-white with orange or brown patches or roaning, or solid orange or brown with or without white markings.

Care and health

A Lagotto usually lives for about fifteen years. Neurological disorders identified in the breed include cerebellar abiotrophy and idiopathic epilepsy.

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