A message from seven years ago
“Dear President, how can it be that a work as expressive as the monument to the dog that I now discover above the Passetto is in this state of decay and abandonment..?” This is the incipit of the email that a Sapienza professor on holiday in Numana addressed about seven years ago to Provincial Federcaccia. The professor, of whom I regretfully lost track, was a hunter, certainly sensitive and passionate. I replied immediately promising the commitment to restore dignity to the beautiful work desired by the great dog lover from Ancona, Dr. Giorgio Gramignani and the sense of gratitude that man owes to the dog, "the most honest creature of God", as Peter the hermit defined it.
A context of neglect
The pointer's tail had been cut off from the bronze group on living rock, created in 1967 by the master Ernesto Coppaloni, and several characters of the dedication had been removed, in a context of neglect. You may or may not share hunting, which is a passion as old as man, but dog breeding, including hunting, is the best image of it. For some years I did not receive feedback from the Doric municipal administration, but I stubbornly never abandoned the initiative, until the support, the availability of some municipal and regional councilors and the sharing of Mayor Silvetti made it possible to return the restored monument to the city with a short ceremony that took place on Monday 26 February.
The customary thanks
Quoting the dedication dictated by Gramignani reported on the stone, I thank those who made the restoration possible and participated in the re-inauguration (the Mayor, the regional councilors Marco Ausili and Maria Grazia De Angelis, the lawyer Maurizio Barbieri for the Ancona dog group and its president , the master restorer Guido Armeni, the daughter of Dr. Gramignani, the engineer Dario Girimonte for the municipal administration and how many dog lovers and hunters present. "To our friends of all times and from every country, from the humble to the champions who with perfect love gave us everything asking only for affection” (Italian Hunting Federation provincial section of Ancona – Ivo Amico)