Let me tell you a little about me and my two lagotti, Augi and Kodiak.
 

About seven years ago my brother's family got a Portuguese Water Dog. He is wonderful and I really wanted one, but I didn't want such a big dog running around the house. I was surfing the Internet looking at PWD sites and came across a kennel who had PWDs and also a smaller dog that looked a lot like the PWDs. I'd never heard of a Lagotto Romagnolo, even having lived in Italy for a year and a half.

 

I started surfing lagotto websites and found very little information about lagotti in the USA, but I found a number of breeders in Italy and other parts of Europe. I started communicating with a few of them and finally decided to make the plunge, having never seen a lagotto in real life. When Augi arrived at LAX in June 2005, she and her sister were the first and only lagotti I'd even seen. I was thrilled!! She was everything I'd thought she'd be and more.

 

We live in Pinetop, Arizona, a small resort town in the White Mountains in north eastern Arizona. Pinetop is in the largest stand of ponderosa pine trees in the world. We are lucky enough to live right next to the National Forest where we have hundreds of acres with numerous hiking and mountain biking trails begging to be explored
 

Augi, from Kan Trace Kennels in Croatia, was born in March 2005. Her parents are Benito and Happy Tail, both of which are various shades of brown. Augi is all white except for a tiny patch of orange behind each ear. She has tight curls and is on the tall side for a female. I think she looks just like her grandmother, Holly at Kan Trace.
 

Valliano Kodiak, our little brown bear, was born in September 2006 at Villa Imperiale in Italy. His mother is Veronica and his father is Tartufo. Veronica is brown and Tartufo is white. Kodiak is brown with a little blaze of white on his chest and at the very tip of his tail. He was darker brown when he was younger, but now that he's about 3 years old his coat is a chocolate milk color. He is thick and strong and loves to hang his tongue out the side of his mouth.
 

Augi and Kodi love to run. We go out in the forest for two miles in the morning before work and another two miles after work and a short walk just before bed. I ride my mountain bike along the forest trails and the dogs follow, get ahead, or veer off the trail and run through the grass and trees. Once in a while they chase up a little cottontail rabbit or flush out birds. When we have a good rain storm, puddles form and there is nothing better than splashing through the water, settling into the mud and turning into a chocolate dipped lagotto. My dogs love to run, not just trot. We rarely go out on a leash; too frustrating for me and them!
 

Augi could chase sticks all day long. Fortunately the forest is full of them. Kodi on the other hand prefers to dig at old stumps. He digs and digs, buries his head in the dirt, sniffs for “truffles”, gets dirt all over his tongue and then moves on to the next stump. My dogs love to be outdoors, free to run where they want to when I'm with them. We have a fenced back yard where they play during the day while I'm at work. They also spend a good deal of time inside the house, sleeping on the cool floors or on my bed.
 

We get snow during the winter and they love the cold weather and chasing snowballs that I throw for them. Their paws never seem to get too cold, as they are never the ones who say it's time to go inside and get warm.

 

Good thing I have a large bed, because both dogs like to sleep with me at night.

 

I can tell the days we don't get out and run. The dogs are so restless and run hog wild through the house, wreaking havoc. Needless to say, we don't miss many runs. If you are thinking about getting a lagotto, be sure you have plenty of time to give them lots of exercise! They have a lot of energy that gets expended one way or another!

 

You can stay updated by checking the website periodically.
 

Grazie

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