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Thinking of owing a Spinone, we can offer you advice and support to decide if they are the breed for you. Remember they are a working gundog and need plenty of mental and physical exercise. Things to consider before you take the plunge.

About The Breed

Taken the plunge? You now have your bundle of joy at home. What next. We can help you care for your dog throughout what we hope will be a happy and healthy long life. Grooming, feeding, exercise, first aid, teething, insurance, heights and weights, to neuter or not, you name it, we will have experience of it.

Caring for your Spinone

The Italian Spinone is an intelligent, tireless, and thorough gundog. As a member of the Hunt, Point, Retrieve group he is best suited to rough shooting but can adapt to beating or picking up. His training will be long and require patience! However, a working Spinoni is a much happier and fulfilled dog. Fostering this natural instinct will give you a keen, eager-to-please gundog, and a calm and content companion in the family home.

Working Your Spinone

Join the Club, here you will find the official stuff. How to become a member, our rules & regs, code of ethics, judges lists, club events, who's on the committees, how we operate.

Why not join our Spinone Club

We are very pro-active about Spinone health and work closely with the Animal Health Trust clinical and genetics teams to provide information for breeders and owners. We have a comprehensive database containing pedigrees and health information about Spinoni worldwide.

Health & Welfare

There are lots of things you can do with your Spinone, an active dog is a happy dog and a more healthy you. They love to be with you doing what you are doing. Work, show, agility, pets as therapy, reading, cani cross, guide dog, hearing dog, assistance for the disabled, obedience, heelwork to music, companion, the list is endless.

Spinone Activities

What's going on in the Spinone world, here you will find all the latest news, announcements and reminders. Browse our Spinone gifts and photo gallery. Here you will also find links to our Google Events calendar and other sites of interest.

What's Going On

ISCGB Rehome & Rescue is a totally voluntary service offering assistance and support for pure bred Spinoni nationwide who, for whatever reason, cannot stay in their current home. We are a not for profit operation and rely on donations and fund raising.

Adoption and Rehome

The genetics team from the AHT are settling in at Cambridge and are hoping to get back to normal working very soon.

This will mean recommencing CA testing and also continuing the very important study into "The prevalence if Idiopathic Epilepsy in the Italian Spinone"

🗯Update from the genetics team at Cambridge🗯

Our scientists recently tested some more dogs for the genetic variants that we had identified from our genome scan as being potentially associated with IE, but our results suggest that we still do not have quite enough samples to be sure whether or not we can replicate this finding, and we need to be sure of this before we can take the study further. As such we are in great need of samples from dogs affected with IE and those over the age of 7 years with no report of seizure.

The team work very closely with Hannes Lohi’s group on epilepsy in several breeds and so any samples that go to him should be able to be shared with our KC genetics team, and vice versa. All of our AHT samples and the majority of data have travelled with us to Cambridge, so are still available.

The genetics team from the AHT have secured a laboratory at Cambridge University, contracts are still being negotiated between the University of Cambridge the Kennel club and Kennel Club Charitable Trust. They hope to be able to recommence the CA testing service in 2-3 months assuming things go smoothly with contracts and university appointments for the testing posts.

Since 2020 I have been in continued discussions with several other laboratories. There are now two of the original four laboratories that responded to my request for them to develop a DNA test for CA.
Dr Mellersh has offered her help and support with those two laboratories in the development of the test.

I have forwarded Dr Mellersh's contact details to the laboratories, we are now awaiting their decisions. Both laboratories will require affected, carrier and control samples to properly validate the test and will have to develop the test from scratch which may have a financial implication, even if this is added to the cost of the test once developed.

Once they have consulted with Dr Mellersh we will have a better idea of costs and timescales involved in developing new tests.

Elaine Kirkham
ISCGB Health Co-ordinator
March 2021

ISCGB Interim CA Breeding Protocol

If you are new to the Spinone or are not familiar with Cerebellar Ataxia (CA), please take the time to learn about this FATAL disease in the Italian Spinone. It occurs when 2 dogs who are carriers of CA are bred together. Statistically 1 in 4 puppies will be affected and have to be euthanased around 9 months of age. A further 2 in 4 puppies will themselves be carriers and can pass this on if bred from, so even in a small litter it is highly likely that 1 or more puppies will be impacted.

As many of you will know the ISCGB has a long relationship with the Animal Health Trust. In 2005 the Canine Genetics Team at the AHT, started working to identify the genetic mutation responsible for the devastating inherited neurological disorder Cerebellar Ataxia (CA) that is known to affect the Italian Spinone.

Is there any good reason to cross our wonderful breed, the Spinone?  The answer must be a resounding NO.

An ancient HPR with so much history, highly valued in its country of Origin reduced to the latest fashion accessory by crossing it with whatever breed you have to hand, then adding to the insult by thinking up a ridiculous name and selling these unregistered pups for rather a lot of money.  I find it sad for the breed.

The best of both breeds?  Why would crossing two breeds of dog result in only the best features of each breed?

All breeds have their good features and their bad.  Individual dogs within each breed can display desirable and undesirable traits.  Nature does not take all the good bits from each parent to produce the perfect dog.  Even when breeding 2 dogs of the same breed this doesn't happen, otherwise all pure bred dogs would be perfect!

28.07.2020 

The Kennel Club and the Animal Health Trust (AHT) have issued a joint statement today (July 28) to advise that, in the wake of this month’s news of the closure of the AHT, the scientific data and biological material including more than 40,000 DNA samples stored at the Kennel Club Genetics Centre at the AHT’s headquarters in Newmarket have been secured and moved to Cambridge University.

The Kennel Club Charitable Trust has funded the Genetics Centre since 2009. Led by Dr Cathryn Mellersh, the Centre aimed to develop, where possible, simple mouth swab screening tests to determine affected and carrier dogs. In deciding which diseases to investigate, the joint Kennel Club and AHT team was looking at the impact on the health and welfare of dogs, but also on the support of breeders and access to data and samples.

What's it like to live with an Italian Spinone? The Italian Spinone is first and foremost a gundog and belongs to the subgroup: Hunt, Point and Retrieve (HPR) and has been around for hundreds of years.

What does HPR mean?  The Spinone, like a lot of continental gundogs, are bred to more or less ‘do the lot’.  They need to hunt for the game, point it, which tells the hunter where the game is, then bring it back once it has been shot by the hunter.  They have very good noses and will follow scent tirelessly.  The Spinoni can work on any terrain: mountains, swamp, thick cover – undergrowth, thorn bushes.

You may not want to work your Spinone but you must remember that ‘instinct will out’.  Just because you have bought one as a pet will not stop the dog doing what comes naturally, this goes for any breed of dog.  So always look into what makes your dog tick.

This was a customarily docked breed until April 2007 when the Government changed the Animal Welfare Act.  The Spinone, along with a lot of working dogs, were docked for a very good reason.  As stated earlier they are bred to work on any terrain, this means that they will go into very thick, coarse cover and with an undocked tail, could cause them to have tail damage and a possible amputation, which in an adult is a full blown procedure.

Ok, we have given you the background of what makes up the Italian Spinone.  So what would it be like to live with?

September 2020

Dear Spinosti

Sorry for the delay in the update from Mr Bawd, but I was hoping that there would be some good news on the horizon, sadly it would appear that once again we are heading into another period of uncertainty that will disrupt our ‘doggy’ lives.

AHT
when the AHT closed its doors in July, Elaine, Cathy and Linda immediately sprang into action on behalf of the ISCGB. Cathy to see if the club had any financial claim on the AHT and Elaine and Linda regarding the CA test, plus other things the AHT do for us. As has already been announced on the ISCGB Website and Facebook pages, at this current time, there is not a valid test available for Spinone CA. The KC have temporarily removed it from their mandatory list of health tests for Spinone, however when a valid test becomes available in the future, the requirement to test for CA will be reintroduced with immediate effect. This is a sad blip for the Spinone and all those that worked so hard to find a solution to this disease in the past. Elaine and Linda continue to liaise with Dr Cathryn Mellersh and her genetics team and it is their intention to resume CA testing for us once they are settled into their new premises later this year. The results for every dog tested by the AHT are shown on their website page, including those from overseas.

FIELD TRIALS
BASC are currently updating their Covid guidelines and at time of writing it is still hoped that field trials and shooting will be able to take place this season as they may well be covered by any exemptions. However this is an ever changing situation and who knows?

AGM
as with most other breed clubs we’ve been unable to hold our AGM this year, official permission from the KC was sought and granted to delay our 2020 AGM. The accounts are ready to be presented to the membership and there are no rule changes, other than the KCs own or AOB to be discussed. BUT I’m pleased to say that we are able to announce the result of the President's vote and that the Club now has a new President: Ms Pat Wilkinson.

MERCHANDISE
one area which has most definitely been busy during lockdown and beyond. Our merchandising team, but mainly Linda Stanley has been working tirelessly to not just get orders out promptly but to source new items at reasonable prices to add to the ‘Spinone Shop’ I think that Linda must have been keeping her local Post Office in business! Check out our merchandise on the Facebook page and website.

R & R
a difficult time for all breeds and let’s hope we don’t see the predicted surge of unwanted puppies coming through the club. Hard for Janet and Kerry to do the usual home checks and visits due to the distancing required, but it was comforting to see how quickly a Spinone owner in distress was picked up on social media by one of the team with the promise of help/fostering services if needed. Well done Janet and Kerry.......

From W.Bawd

Welcome to the North West Spinone Training Group Page on the ISCGB website.
This Group was set up in early 2016 as a result of a passion of mine to have a local training group specifically for Spinone and following discussions with the clubs Field Trial secretary, which lead to it being supported by the ISCGB Committee. The background to the reasons for my passion for such a group to exist can be found in two articles, the links of which can be found below if you are interested.

Please use the form below to edit your dog's details on our website.  You can use this form to add a pet name or submit health test results before they are published in the Breed Record Supplement. We can also add the age and cause of death to your dog's information page if you would like this to be shown. Click to Report