A Weekend in Maremma
By Janet Finlay
At the end of October I took advantage of cheap flights to once again take a weekend break in Italy, this time to go to the Italian Maremma club show in Grosseto, in the heart of the Maremma region of Tuscany. I had arranged to travel with Eline Jagtenberg, a breeder friend from Holland, to visit some breeders in the area before going on to the show on Sunday. All went to plan and on Friday afternoon, Eline and I set off from Pisa airport to drive to Empoli to meet up with another friend, Juha Westerlund, from Finland, where we went straight to visit our first breeders, who welcomed us into their home and introduced us to their four dogs, the youngest a 4 month old puppy, by the well known winner Cafiero, who was going to her first show on the Sunday.
The following day we headed south to Venturina to meet the breeder of another well known Maremma sire, Turco. He took us to see his dogs in their beautiful olive grove outside the town, where we also met the rest of his family and chatted about his views on the breed. After a very pleasant visit we set off for Tarquinia to visit our final breeder, Stramacci, who I had visited on the MSDCGB trip back in 1997. Dr Stramacci and his wife welcomed us at short notice and were very hospitable – and interestingly remembered the previous visit! Although he no longer shows very often, he does still have a lot of Maremmas and breeds regularly. A highlight for me was seeing his oldest dog, a male we had met on the previous trip when he was just a youngster!
After visiting the breeders we set off to Grosseto to meet up with Agostino Molinelli and a number of other Abruzzo breeder friends to get ready for the traditional pre-show meal – once again a feast of traditional Italian food and wine in a local hostelry. This time though our large group was rather upstaged by a birthday party of teenage girls on the next table who sang their way through the evening to everyone’s amusement!
The next day the show was held at a local military dog training base – an excellent large venue with the added advantage of a display of army dogs to entertain us over lunch. Although two judges were scheduled, one was not available, so the other judge covered all the classes. This had a major advantage for us as spectators as we could easily watch all the judging! As always at Italian shows, it was great to see so many Maremmas all in one place – not as large an entry as the show in May but with nearly 60 dogs, still a lot more than we are used to these days in the UK.
Best in Show from the Champion dog class was It Ch Bastiano (pictured above with a female), a dog featured in the last Maremmandum, as he was also Andrew Brace’s all breeds BIS winner earlier in the year. But my personal favourite was a 5 month old male puppy, Pascione, (pictured below) who had real presence for one so young. I will be watching his progress with interest in future!
As always the hospitality extended to us was wonderful – and we left for the airport feeling happy that we’d packed an awful lot into a short time.