Il Contado del Molise

(translation by Cocci)

First of all, “Il Contado del Molise” represents:

Ø ● respect for all animals and their environment;

Ø ● love for dogs;

Ø ● particular love and disinterested devotion to Cane Corso and its preservation;

● awareness that a part of our history, roots and traditions lies also in the day-to-day experienced life of Cane Corso.

Cane Corso have always existed in our country. We first met this Dog more than forty years ago, and have been studying its history, behaviour and morphology since then.

We have deeply investigated and found valuable evidences in books, pictures, drawings and sculptures. They allowed us to acquire a lot of precious biological and cultural references which helped keeping the Cane Corso such as tradition and history have passed them down to us.

In Italy, someone have instead taken advantage of these animals. They shaped their morphological features so to meet the market requirements, easing – on purpose – disinformation about the traditional Cane Corso. Useless and merely aesthetic characteristics were preferred and emphasized just for the sake of business.

At the same time, we were combing hills and lands of our country so to contact the actual users of Cane Corso and gather their experiences. The problem was then faced from a practical point of view, since universities, museums and libraries couldn’t teach this matter exhaustively. That was the only way to understand how Cane Corso should be made “inside”, and how this inside part of them should come out from their morphological peculiarities.

The inner and outer features of Cane Corso have to conform to the traditional employments that have shaped their character. Nothing more, nothing less.

We are just following traditions. We have always disregarded the trends of the market.

Our goal has never been that of obtaining a “new dog”!

We have never resorted to a forced genetics. Our Dogs have always ignored the constraints of beauty shows (two millimetres or two sexagesimal degrees plus or minus…)!

Our Masters taught us that struggling for a mere aesthetic beauty could only lead to a degeneration of races. We have always kept away from this.

We have just taken and restored (totally devoted to our Dog) what has not yet been polluted by all sorts of bastardizations, and did it with extreme care and devotion. We have never, in any case, distracted our indignation ed attention from all the disfigurements that were going on.

Unfortunately, traditional Cane Corso are doomed to disappear, if a suitable, strong intervention is not carried out.

Cane Corso represent a synthesis of utilitarian, harmonious and psychic beauties. They aroused our enthusiasm through the historical researches that we have conducted, through the tales that we have gathered from our country people. They are our friends and we have learnt to love, respect and interact with them, utilizing the experiences made by farmers, hunters and shepherds. There is now a real risk that Cane Corso could succumb.

“Il Contado del Molise” is strongly determined to maintain this precious zootechnical and cultural heritage, and will not allow traditional Cane Corso to be erased from the memory of dog lovers.

“Il Contado del Molise” has been working for quite a long time in preserving very ancient races from extinction and has, as well, developed a project consisting in the creation of a “Study and Development Center”. The activities of this center will be focussed on the re-increase of the value of Cane Corso, in order to place again their traditional functions in a modern social-economic-environmental context.

The activities of the center (already started up and partially consolidated) shall consist of:

a) finding “rustic”[1] subjects;

b) testing their attitudes and character;

c) housing these subjects and favour their reproduction according to functional, character and health criteria;

d) giving up the puppies to selected practical users;

e) monitoring the health and performances of dogs through continuous connections with the users;

f) checking the results, defining and effecting corrective interventions and improvements;

g) organizing non-competitive meetings, for selective purposes, with judgements from experts and character tests effected by professional people;

h) organizing congresses in order to spread and deepen the knowledge acquired;

i) spreading out the knowledge of Traditional Cane Corso in a very capillary way.

This is no competitive action against the Kennel Clubs, but an opportunity - for dog lovers and for all those who thinks the dog to be an help, a friend and not just a business - to compare themselves in a practical, true, sincere environment excluding selfish feelings.

The problem has not been undervalued: we perfectly foresee the difficulties and endeavours to cope with, as well as the obstacles that we shall have to overcome. We trust, anyway, in all those honest people who will, no doubt, side with our ambitious project, knowing that the only profit will be growing together and exchange our knowledge.

We shall try it!

People aiming only at their economical profit, using the different dog lover organizations just for their own benefit, are not welcome. Beauty shows, “champions”, … easy certificates, ….. and so on …. are not interesting to us.

“Il Contado del Molise”

Center for the functional selection

of the Traditional Cane Corso

[1] “Rustic”, in our meaning, identifies the prevalence within Cane Corso of those characters that are most relevant for the excellence of the “functional beauty” even if to the detriment of the “conventional” characters so much awarded in the shows. (See F.A.Q.: “What do we mean for “beauty” in a dog”)

Briefly, and surely not exhaustively, we will here enumerate some of those characters which cannot but descended from a particular structure, moulded during the ages, by the functional employment:

● Great physical resistance in job (even in critical environment contexts);

● Great adaptability in hostile habitats (for example, the presence of the undercoat and a thick and resistant skin allow it to live in any different kind of weather condition and allow it to be resistant to whatever may cause wounds);

● High food assimilation (rustic Corso, even if it’s greedy, adapts easily itself to frugality and it’s able to make the best of the available food);

● Disease tolerance (it has an amazing physical condition and react in a very natural way to different kind of “not-so-serious” diseases”)

● Balanced character which expresses, especially in conflict situations, trough an event adequate reaction;

● Prevalent adaptive and instinctive intelligence (applied in a rural context) compared to the “intelligence to obey” .

[Where, in the opinion of the American psychologist Stanley Coren: the “adaptive intelligence” regards the dog’s ability to pass over new circumstances and problems working out a behavior that is suitable for the new situation, the “instinctive intelligence” includes the skills and behaviors that are within the genetic heritage of the dog (for ex. “fetching” in Labrador Retriever and the flock’s protection in the Mastino Abruzzese) and the “intelligence to obey” is inherent to the ability of learning and apply commands.]

● Physiognomic heterogeneity linked to a good genetic variability internal to the race, derived from original stocks sometimes specialized from the functional employment point of view, but highly representative of the traditional morphology of Cane Corso;

· …..