Lagotto Romagnolo Grooming

About the Lagotto Romagnolo

Almost every other curly coat is combed to the skin and brushed out. A Poodle, a doodle and a Portuguese Water Dog all need a metal comb passing freely from skin to tip, and the whole point is to separate every hair.

The Lagotto is the reverse, and getting it wrong is the single most common mistake made with the breed.

Its coat is dense, woolly and tightly ringed, closer to sheep's wool than to Poodle curl, and it is a working coat: this is an Italian water retriever turned truffle dog, and the ringlets are what make it waterproof and thorn resistant. Brushing that coat out straightens the ringlets, destroys the water resistance and produces a frizzy dog that looks nothing like the breed. A Lagotto is kept short and left to hold its curl.

Why this curl is not handled like a Poodle

The difference is what the coat is for. A Poodle coat is maintained at length and shaped, so it is brushed out completely and every hair separated. A Lagotto coat is a functional working jacket, and its ringlets are the working part: tight curls shed water, resist thorn and keep the dog warm in cold marshland.

Brush that out and three things happen. The ringlets straighten into frizz, the coat loses its water resistance, and the dog stops looking like a Lagotto, because the breed's outline is a compact even curl over the whole body including the face.

So the coat is kept short, generally an inch or so all over, and left to curl. It is scissored or clipped down every eight to twelve weeks rather than brushed out and shaped.

Between appointments the job is not brushing but checking. Run your fingers through the coat in sections down to the skin, feeling for anything that has begun to knit together. Where you find a small mat, separate it with your fingers, splitting it apart rather than combing it straight.

A wide toothed comb is used only to check that the coat is still open at the skin, not to brush the coat out.

If you do want a slightly longer coat, the interval has to shorten, because a longer Lagotto coat felts quickly. Most owners find an inch on a ten week schedule is the comfortable point.

Felting, which is what happens if you leave it

The trade for not brushing it out is that a Lagotto coat felts, genuinely and quickly, if it is allowed to grow.

The mechanism is the one every non-shedding coat has: the coat grows continuously and holds every dead hair, and on a woolly curl those dead hairs bind into the living ones and the whole thing knits into a solid sheet. On a Lagotto it happens faster than on a Poodle because the hair is finer and more crimped, which is precisely what wool is.

The places it starts are the standard ones: behind and under the ears, the armpits, the inside of the back legs, under a collar or harness, the chest, and around the rear.

What to do when you find felting is different from other breeds. Small mats are teased apart with fingers. Anything larger is cut out or the coat is taken shorter, because working a felted woolly coat with a comb is hours of pulling on skin and it destroys the curl anyway.

Never bathe a matted coat, because water is exactly what turns wool into felt. That is not a figure of speech here: warm water plus agitation is literally how felt is made, and it is why a matted Lagotto that goes into a bath comes out considerably worse.

Bathe every couple of months, let the coat dry naturally or on low heat, and do not blast it straight with a dryer, which flattens the curl for weeks.

Shedding is minimal, which is why it needs cutting rather than deshedding.

The face, the ears and the water

The face carries the same coat as the body, with thick curled eyebrows, a full beard and a mustache, and it is trimmed to an even length rather than shaped into a style. Enough to keep hair out of the eyes and no more.

The beard is a daily job. It goes into every water bowl and every meal, holds both, and a Lagotto with a wet beard walks it around the house. Rinse and dry it after meals and check it for food and debris.

The ears are drop, well covered with curly coat, and sit over a canal that does not drain by gravity. This is a water dog that will get into anything wet, so ear trouble is the breed's main routine health nuisance.

Lift the flap weekly, look and smell. Dry the ears thoroughly after every swim and every bath, and ask a groomer to keep the hair around the opening trimmed short for airflow.

Head shaking, a head tilt, redness or dark discharge means a veterinarian rather than a cleaner.

The feet want the hair between the pads kept flush, which matters on a dog that works soft ground and, in its original job, digs for truffles.

One more practical note: a Lagotto coat picks up burrs and seed heads readily because a woolly curl catches everything. Check the coat and between the toes after walks in long grass.

The puppy coat, and a long lived dog

Lagotto puppies are born with a softer, wavier coat that is much easier to manage, and the adult woolly curl comes in between roughly eight and eighteen months. As with every non-shedding breed, the transition is when most dogs mat badly for the first time, because the dead puppy coat has nowhere to go and binds into the incoming adult coat.

The response is a shorter trim through that period plus more frequent checking, not a longer interval.

The adult curl also varies between individuals, from a tight even ringlet to a looser wave, and the looser coats felt more readily because there is more length to knit together.

Worth knowing about the breed generally: the Lagotto is unusually long lived for its size, commonly reaching fifteen to seventeen, which means an owner will be doing this routine for a long time and that keeping the dog easy to handle is a real investment.

They are also busy, intelligent working dogs bred to search, and an under-stimulated Lagotto digs. That is not grooming, but a dog that has spent the morning excavating the garden arrives at a salon with a coat full of soil, which a woolly curl holds very effectively.

Nails every three to four weeks, and teeth as usual.

What to tell your groomer

Say the coat must not be brushed out or blown straight, and that you want the curl kept. This is the instruction that matters and most groomers will otherwise treat it as a doodle.

Ask for an even length all over, including the face, rather than a shaped trim, and give a length in numbers.

Book every eight to twelve weeks, and shorter if you want the coat longer.

Ask them to dry it on low or let it air dry rather than blasting it straight.

Ask for the ears checked and the hair around the opening kept short, the beard tidied, and the pads cleared.

And say the dog's age, because between eight and eighteen months the coat is changing and needs more time.

Keeping the coat between grooms

Common Questions About the Lagotto Romagnolo