NBISS · GCHS · CHICIl Granaio dei Malatesta Flocky × Gillenias · SwedenGillenias Elisabeth

We breed once in a season, at most, and every litter exists to answer a question. This one answers the largest question a small programme can ask: what happens when the #1 Lagotto Romagnolo in the United States meets a dam whose pedigree was assembled an ocean away from his — and crosses it exactly once.

The Sire

Il Granaio dei Malatesta Flocky

Flocky was bred by Monica Benelli and Marco Damiani at Il Granaio dei Malatesta in Bastia Umbra, Italy — the kennel our own foundation came from. Monica owns him; Traci Chan and Blair Aguillard showed him in the United States. His record is short to state:

Three different judging panels, under three different sets of conditions, reached the same conclusion in the same year. Agreement at that level comes from the dog.

That sentence is the whole of our case for exclusivity, and we will not decorate it. The breeder who produced Flocky — and who produced our foundation dam before him — reviewed this pairing and said yes. Everything else on this page is documentation.

The Dam

Gillenias Elisabeth

Blanca is the deliberate half of this pairing. Bred by Anna Peterson at the Gillenias kennel in Sweden, she carries a pedigree assembled in parallel to the Italian mainstream rather than derived from it — Scandinavian selection over decades, reaching back through the Dutch Rozebottel line of Katrien van Gemert, the first breeder ever to win Crufts with a Lagotto. Her documented pedigree coefficient of inbreeding stands at 0.65 percent — a figure most working pedigrees in this breed cannot approach.

She is five years old, in full health, and entirely typical of what careful Scandinavian breeding produces: calm, curious, deeply bonded, unreactive. In our years with her we have not seen anxiety, sharpness, or instability. Structure can be photographed; temperament has to be lived with. We live with hers, and it is the temperament we want in every puppy that carries our name.

Documented Health

Both Parents, In Full

We publish complete panels, including the results a sales page would omit. Breeders read health honestly or not at all.

One line in those tables deserves a sentence. Flocky carries a single copy of crd4/cord1; Blanca is genetically clear. Paired this way, no puppy in this litter can be affected by PRA — some may inherit one carrier copy, which has no health consequence for the dog itself and is simply managed in any future pairing, exactly as it was managed in this one. This is what carrier status is for: a programme that tests fully can use an outstanding dog without ever producing the disease.

The Pedigree

Three Generations, Typeset

Read it the way a breeder reads it — left to right, parents to great-grandparents. The two halves of this chart were assembled in different countries by different hands, and they meet in exactly one place.

Highlighted: the single thread the two pedigrees share. Zeus (Foianesi) stands as Flocky’s maternal grandsire; Blanca reaches him one generation further back, through his son Spino della Cascinetta. Pedigree data: The Breed Archive and registry records.

The Rationale

Why These Two

Most pairings available in North America fold the same handful of American lines back on themselves. This one does the opposite. Flocky is the direct expression of the Italian mainstream at its absolute best — the kennel that has defined modern breed type, judged so at Westminster and at the breed’s own National Specialty. Blanca is what Scandinavian selection built in parallel over the same decades: a different route back to the same Italian foundations, carrying the Rozebottel and Lingotto D’oro lines that barely exist on this continent.

The chart above is the argument. Three generations deep, the two pedigrees intersect at a single dog — a thread of linebreeding back to Zeus (Foianesi) and the della Cascinetta dogs, inside what is otherwise a genuine outcross. That structure is not an accident; it is the reason this pairing was made. It concentrates what the Italian line does best while opening the gene pool that American breeding has spent a decade narrowing. Pedigree COI and genetic COI are different measurements — we say so plainly — but both halves of this pairing were chosen with the same intent: puppies with depth behind them and room in front of them.

We are selecting for what we always select for, in order: temperament, structure, health, coat. The puppies will carry two pedigrees assembled over decades, on two separate paths, by breeders at the top of theirs. What they do with them — in a breeding programme, in the ring, or asleep on a kitchen floor in Whatcom County — is the next chapter.

Placements

Where These Puppies Are Going

This litter is positioned first for breeding programmes — established kennels, and serious people at the beginning of one, who understand what this particular combination of pedigrees offers and intend to build on it. Placements of that kind are conversations, not transactions, and we expect them to begin well before the litter is on the ground.

A small number of companion placements will be made alongside them — to households, ideally near us in Washington, who want a dog of this quality and are prepared to work closely with us over the years that follow. If that describes you, you do not need to know what that partnership looks like before writing; that is what the first conversation is for.

Every puppy, in every placement, is raised identically: whelped in our home, on the Puppy Culture protocol — early neurological stimulation, structured enrichment, deliberate socialisation through the developmental windows — with the same health testing, the same documentation, and the same matching process we describe across this site. A litter of this calibre does not change the programme. It is what the programme was built for.

Enquiries are open — write Mark & Tracy

The Season

Timeline

Questions

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