About us

During Erja’s younger years, her family owned a Boxer named Tani (Tanith von der Nutzen), who had two Boxer litters while living with Erja’s parents.

However, the next dog did not arrive until a few decades later in the 1990s, when Inka, as a teenage girl, finally convinced the family to get another dog. After searching for a suitable breed, we found the Cirneco dell’Etna. At that time, in 1997, there were only three Cirneco dell’Etnas in Finland and the Nordic countries combined.

Jazi (Bambi, 1997–2012), our very first Cirneco dell’Etna, arrived to us from Italy. Jazi’s breeder was Domenico Tricomi, who today breeds Cirneco dell’Etnas together with Jane Moore under the kennel name Hadranensis, although back in the 1990s they did not yet share a kennel name. With Jazi, Inka became actively involved in dog shows, lure coursing, track racing, and agility, and also travelled abroad to shows, including Italy itself. 

Becoming breeders was never something we had carefully planned, in many ways it happened almost by accident. The full story is probably too long to tell here, but in short: in the summer of 2000, Inka travelled to Italy with Jazi and returned to Finland with Felix del Gelso Bianco, the sire of our first litter. Felix stayed with us on a breeding loan for a few months, and as a result our very first litter was born in the autumn of 2000.

At that time, the entire dog hobby was mainly Inka’s project, and Erja was not yet particularly enthusiastic about dog shows or breeding. However, because Inka was still underage, the kennel name Iosono was applied for in Erja’s name, and the FCI officially granted the kennel name Iosono on 18 September 2000, just two days before the birth of our very first litter.

The original plan had simply been to have one or two litters with Jazi and leave it at that. Things turned out differently, however, as Erja gradually became more interested in the hobby as well, and our breeding work continued through Jazi’s two daughters.

By this point, our first Italian Greyhound, Seela (Necku C’est Cela, 1999–2003), had also joined our family, and from our second Cirneco litter we kept a male named Miki (Iosono Michelangelo, 2001–2010).

Our following Cirneco dell’Etna litters were born in 2004 and 2005. Eventually, Italian Greyhound breeding also began to attract us. Our first Italian Greyhound litter was born in the summer of 2007 out of Ida (Necku Iosono Vicenza), who was the daughter of our Seela. All 12 Italian Greyhound litters bred by us descend from Seela and Ida. We have also imported a few Italian Greyhounds from abroad, although none of those dogs were ultimately used in our breeding program.

Over the years, we have bred a total of 24 Cirneco dell’Etna litters. We have imported many dogs from abroad, and especially from Domenico and Jane in Italy. In addition to our first Cirneco, Bambi, the following Hadranensis dogs have come to Finland to live with us: Hadranensis Radames, Hadranensis Simba, Hadranensis Poirot, Hadranensis Giglio, Hadranensis Lilla, Hadranensis Ginestra, Hadranensis Cornelius, Hadranensis Erice, and Hadranensis Zimana. Domenico and Jane have been our mentors throughout all these years of breeding, and we are truly grateful to them for their guidance and support. Domenico is widely regarded as one of the greatest experts and authorities on the breed in the world. We have also imported several other dogs from breeders in Italy, Belgium, Sweden, and Russia.

The most important goal of our breeding work in both breeds has always been to breed healthy dogs with breedtypical temperaments and not forgetting the breedtype.