THE BITE AND THE JAWS OF THE CANE CORSO
Paolo Breber
Via Ragazzi del '99 n° 12, I-35028
Piove di Sacco (Pd), Italia.
The focal feature of the Cane Corso,
as with the rest of molossus dogs, is the holding bite (in Italian this
category of dogs is called "cani da presa", i.e. catch dogs)
with which it fastens onto its adversary, tires and overcomes it. The
holding bite is different from the ordinary bite in that the grip becomes
locked and the animal shuts its mind off, quite oblivious to external
stimuli. The paradigm of this behavioural trait is to be found in an
episode from the saga of Alexander the Great. Having crossed the Hydaspes
River (the present Jehlam River in Punjab) and beaten King Porus, the
conqueror was then met and entertained by king Sophites. In the course of
ensuing festivities, the king, wanting to impress Alexander with the
valour of his catch dogs, unleashed four onto a lion which was duly
attacked and held. One of the king's archers then entered the pit and cut
a leg off one of the dogs. But the dog did not let go. The other legs were
also severed but the dog died with its jaws locked. Today, after more than
two thousand years and many turns of history, this remains the same prized
behavioural trait when the work of a catch dog is described. An example
for all is the Pit Bull Terrier, a dog which still has the good fortune of
being bred for work. Those that use this breed say you must look for the
"holding dog"; the one that will hang on to its adversary (boar,
razorback, steer) even at the cost of its life. How did this behavioural
trait arise? One explanation could be that it is the same instinct that
makes a puppy hang on for dear life to its mother's dug. The number of
puppies in a litter is often in excess of the available dugs and it is a
grim battle for survival that is fought for the source of nourishment
because the losers are doomed to weaken and die. Once a puppy has fastened
onto a dug it is in a state of bliss and nothing will detach it before it
is gorged, and this is much the same mental state of a Cane Corso with a
hold. At this point it is significant to recall how the old-timers of the
Cane Corso proceed to choose those puppies to keep and those to cull soon
after birth. The man first waits for the litter to begin suckling in
earnest and then calls the bitch to him. As the bitch gets up and walks a
few steps, he notices which of the puppies stays hanging from the dugs.
These will be the best.
If a powerful holding bite ("presa")
is the very essence of the Cane Corso then it follows that its jaws should
be mechanically perfect. The upper and lower jaws should be of the same
length and the teeth should be completely developed and interlock without
fault. This is the condition dictated by nature, as may be observed in the
skull of a wolf, and is therefore the most functional. In molossus-type
dogs undershot jaws appear frequently but it is an error to interpret this
condition as a functional adaptation, as is often done, because it is
really just a malformation caused by a misfunction of the growth hormones.
In any case, a powerful bite is not obtained by breeding for big, short
muzzles but by breeding dogs that have powerful bites. It is the spirit
that commands the body and not vice versa. If I want race horses, I am not
going to breed horses with long legs but horses that win races. Of course,
in practice the two matters tend to meet but one should never confuse
causes and effects. Where the Cane Corso is bred for work the undershot
jaw stays away.
The undershot condition is not
caused by the lengthening of the lower jaw but by the shortening of the
upper jaw and nose. It determines a loss of efficiency not only in the
holding bite but also in mastication and in the care of the epidermis.
There are those who insist in seeing a functional adaptation in a jutting
lower jaw. According to this school of thought, when a dog grabs a sow or
a bull, it is supposed not inflict damage by cutting the flesh because the
upper and lower teeth do not shut. Another idea is that a receding nose
helps the dog breathe when, during a fight, its muzzle is pressed against
the body of its adversary. I think this is all nonsense. As a matter of
fact a short nose causes problems in breathing and ventilation as any
owner of an English Bulldog, Pug, Pekinese, etc. will tell you. The canine
brain requires a lower temperature than the rest of the body and it is
cooled by air inhaled into the nasal cavity. Thus dogs with short noses
have little resistance to protracted physical exercise because they
quickly become overheated.
The Italian Kennel Club (Ente
Nazionale per la Cinofilia Italiana) has recently recognised the Cane
Corso as a true breed but has unfortunately made the mistake of defining
it prognathous (with undershot jaw). The purpose of the conference of
Civitella Alfedena (1990), the proceedings of which have been published,
was to ensure that the old-timers, those countrymen from the south of
Italy who, during obscure times, had kept the Cane Corso in life simply
out of attachment for their culture, could transmit the authentic
traditional Standard of Points to the E.N.C.I. before this organisation
proceeded to official recognition. The official standard that followed
turned out fairly well with regards to the physical aspect although there
are a few omissions and a couple of mistakes, the more serious of which is
the point about the undershot jaw. The dynamic and moral features of the
breed, i.e. work and temperament, are very unsatisfactorily described in
the document.
Why has the prognathous condition
been forced upon the Cane Corso? Alas, the idea that the breed should be
prognathous had already taken root in the mind of canine officialdom before
the Civitella Alfedena Conference. The following is the crucial episode
which made the breed take the wrong turn. Among the very early dogs of
quality produced by fanciers, as distinct from the original rural stock,
was Basir, a male born in 1980, out of Dauno and Tipsy, two corsi that had
been bred by me. As so often happens in the dog world, the owner became so
enthusiastic over his pet that he lost all sense of proportion. He became
the fanatical promoter of this dog and at every possible occasion he would
place it under the nose of any ENCI official who happened to be passing by
with the comment: "This is the Cane Corso of all time". The
owner was neither an old-timer nor a serious student or a breeder, but
since he held position in the recognised Cane Corso Club his word carried
weight with the E.N.C.I. It must be allowed that Basir was in actual fact
a fine specimen but it had an inverted scissor bite, in other words
the lower incisors closed on the anterior face of the upper incisors.
Mainly through the insistence of this man, this feature found its way into
the standard but the wording used to define it, instead of being
"inverted scissors", was "prognathous". Now there is a
great difference between the two. You have true prognathous jaws when the
whole set of upper teeth is staggered with respect to the lower set and
there is a gap between the upper and lower incisors when the mouth is
shut. In my experience, a pure bred Cane Corso never presents this
condition. On the other hand, the inverted scissors bite crops up in about
20% of cases. This condition may be peacefully tolerated if the rest of
the teeth lock correctly into one another but it should not be
encouraged. Otherwise, the breed presents a scissors bite or an even
bite, both of which are preferable to the former case. The old-timers are
very explicit in condemning undershot jaws. But people in the dog trade
have to conform to the E.N.C.I. standard if they want to do business with
the majority of the market. Thus, an early, amateur-bred, much-shown Cane
Corso with an inverted-scissors bite generated the wording "prognathous"
in the official standard which in turn is now generating never-seen-before
prognathous Cani Corsi.
As a concluding thought I would like
to reflect on the way a standard of points is conceived. It is wrong to
think it is the mean of the characteristics of the population that
constitutes the breed because it is not an expression of the majority. The
standard is an ideal of perfection which may show up in varying portions
of the population according to the historical moment in which the breed
finds itself. Some fashionable breeds of today, where there has been good
breeding work, are presently at a high level of quality and the majority
certainly conforms to the ideal standard. But when I discovered the Cane
Corso in the '70s, the breed was really in a bad shape and the average
characteristics of those few dozen specimens I had managed to scrape up
certainly did not represent the ideal standard. Only four dogs of all
those that I had seen were truly up to the mark. How did I know these were
the right ones? The answer is that I interviewed the old-timers and did my
best to interpret the tradition, avoiding as best as I could any personal
bias. A domestic breed is not an independent biological entity, like in
the case of a wild species, but it is inseparable from the human social
group that is its traditional depositary. In other words, to understand
the Cane Corso it is not sufficient to observe as many specimens as
possible but it is also necessary to have the breed described by those who
use and breed it. Among the original unregistered Cani Corsi living in the
country I have often come across those with the lower incisors overlapping
the upper ones, even my old bitch Mirak, the matriarch of the kennel dogs
and grandmother of Basir, had them, but this does not mean that irregular
teeth are to be desired in a breed that essentially expresses itself
through its bite.
This article is the improved
translation of "La Presa e le Mascelle del Cane Corso" which
recently appeared in "Canidapresa" magazine, the original
Italian text of which I sent by Fax a few days ago. If you wish to publish
it in your bulletin remember to ask permission to
"Canidapresa" Ed. V. sas,
Via Cernaia 32,
10122 Torino,
Italy. Tel. +11 531123 Fax. +11 533308