In as much as we’ve all known someone who qualified as an “old coot,” we’re guessing that few us have personally known a real Coot.
A real Coot is a tough waterbird found on ponds, lakes, and marshes, and in Europe, they are likely Eurasian Coots. Because these birds aren’t strong at flying, they’d rather stay in the water. They can be prickly, very aggressive, and even attack other birds, and perhaps this is the source of the moniker given to eccentric or irritable old people.
Back in the day, there was another creature that a Coot was likely to encounter in a marsh or swamp, and it was a dog named the Lagotto Romagnolo.
The Lagotto just might be the only dog in the AKC’s Sporting Group that was purposefully bred away from hunting fowl, but it was once a very talented hunter of Coots in the lakes of Northern Italy. Indeed, the Lagotto’s name comes from “Lago,” which means lake in Italian, and “Romagna,” which refers to the region in which the dogs originated, though some sources state that in the local dialect of the Romagna, “Càn Lagòt” is synonymous with “water dog” or “wetland hunting dog with crimped, curly coat.”
In what could have been a career-ending move for the breed, the hunting grounds of Emilia-Romagna, almost entirely marshland in the old days, was drained and converted to farmland in the mid 1800s to achieve a better standard of living for the people who lived there. Vast flocks of waterfowl disappeared, but by then, the Lagotta had already been used to look for truffles, so when the dog lost its role as a retriever, it became the premier hunter of truffles. It’s name went from the Romagna Water Dog to the Italian Truffle Dog. Now that’s versatility.
It wasn’t huge change for the dog, however. The same qualities that made the Lagotto a great retriever of Coots (young and old) makes the Lagotta effective as a hunter of fungi. A smallish size enables him to get at tree roots and underbrush. A keen nose ferrets out truffles, and a rustic coat protects him from bramble and thorns.
These days, waterfowl hunting and duck shooting in Italy is quite limited in terms of places to do it, and only a few Lagotto are still used in the capacity of their original purpose. We did come across information that a breeding pair was imported by Ann Kemp and Gael Stenton into the United Kingdom back in 1997, the two named Reno and Rossetta. They were the first Lagotto in the UK and arrived from the Mandriole kennels located at the edge of marshlands north of Ravenna. At the time of the article, Lagotto from that kennel were still worked as duck retrievers from the traditional flat bottomed marsh punts, but we don’t know if this is still the case.
Image: Tobia” by Xena “best friend” is licensed and shared here under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0