|
4 The Cane Corso and Boar Hunting
There is a mosaic in a room in the luxurious Roman villa in Casale (AD 3rd or 4th century), on Piazza Armerina, which depicts this kind of hunting with an life-like and realistic image: a boar is making one final effort to defend itself, dripping blood from a wound in the center of its chest, which has been pierced by the hunter’s spear; a man lies on the ground, wounded, another is overcome by fear, and a fourth is throwing a large stone at the wild beast. Two dogs complete the group: one sets its teeth into the boar’s flank and presents the lean form of a greyhound, the other is clearly a molossoid: cut ears, an attentive eye, and an athletic body; robust, well-muscled, lean, and vigorous, it faces the boar and bares all of its teeth. Its appearance is very similar to our modern day Cane Corso. Even before using our dog to raise swine in its more recent domestic form, we find it as a hunter of the wild variety. It has been used to hunt boar by rich land-owners, noble lords, and professional hunters since time immemorial. Because of its mass, its meat, and its tendency to live in packs, the boar has always attracted great interest, even if capturing it meant running considerable risks and called for a well thought-out strategy. Strong, audacious, and armed with stout tusks, the boar prefers to flee when pursued, but if it is wounded, it will adopt a defensive tactic against whomever comes against it, be it man or dog. The hunting dogs, in such cases, needed to carry out intelligent and courageous maneuvers. Each one of them instinctively knew the limits of attack and defense in order to avoid the mortal wounds that, from time to time, young dogs, driven by an unstoppable furor for combat, would receive. Expert hunters would choose their dogs well knowing the prey’s possible reactions. So the Cane Corso was an ideal choice. Robust and compact with an ample chest and a short, wide, and muscular lumbar-region; Solidly boned, well-planted limbs, lose and feline movements; well-centered, fluid, and decisive in the attack. A powerful neck and heavy jaw-muscles; a formidable set of teeth gave it the advantage of a "serrated bite." The large and well-spaced canines, the straight line of the incisors, and the mandible with incisors that stuck-out a half of a centimeter further than those of the upper jaw, in fact, permitted the dog to have that immovable bite.
[There seems to be a page missing here]
...thrown by the dog-keepers; on the right a large boar that has been seized by the ear and is now in difficult position under the assault of the pack, a pair of dogs out of combat, and the rapid arrival of the men on horse back to finish it off with their lances. The packs of hunting dogs are made up of greyhounds and light molossers: some of the greyhounds are spotted, while the molossers are, for the most part, blond (almost wheat-colored), with some having a darker coat with clear evidence of tiger-striping. Without a shadow of a doubt they are Cani Corsi, which the author shows us as if to tear the veils of time in a modern reinterpretation of the molossers depicted in the wild ass hunt in the 7th century BC bas-relief from Nineveh conserved in the British Museum in London. Even the exterior form of the Cane Corso was well cared for, and, since the dog was used in various roles, it underwent drastic adaptive changes through the years. The ears and the tail, if left intact, constituted a disadvantage in hunting large and dangerous wild game and when fighting against harmful animals. The experience and the direct observation of this nuisance suggested that the dog’s ears and tail be cut in order to offer less for the an adversary to seize. The tail was amputated during the first week of a pup’s life with a clean cut by an axe or scissors that the mother licked to promote the formation of a scar. The ears, conversely, were cut short in a form of an equilateral triangle around the age of three months, without the use of anesthesia, and disinfected with ashes. The pups were then given the cut-off pieces to eat, fried in a pan, a practice which was believed to heighten their aggression and sharpen their temper. It is worth noting, however, that, all told, the dog was not esthetically displeasing, and in fact its ferocious appearance gained it respect and served as an excellent deterrent in its role as guard dog, keeping outsiders and trouble-makers a long way off. These amputations are still practiced today, but in the rural zones of the South it is not uncommon to find subjects with their ears and tail intact. The Cane Corso’s natural, instinctive inclination to face any animal was accentuated for boar hunting through a simple and opportune training regimen. Adult dogs were incited against the hog while the pups, on a leash, observed the tactics used in the attack. Once the swine had been immobilized by the ear or the snout, the pups where unleashed and goaded with fervor and reassuring energy to instill in them speed and decisiveness and to accustom them to the prey’s quick, violent reactions and them to attack at the most favorable moment, to seize the prey without fail. Another useful exercise was to bring the pups out into the brush and to suddenly throw a young boar or badger, bound, into a thicket, giving the pups the chance to root it out and to vent their aggression by sinking their teeth into a harmless quarry. The Cane Corso, accustomed since the dawn of time to hunting down and fighting bears and wolves and to pounce, lightning-fast, latching itself on to its foe’s jugular until it felt it stop moving, still today retains the genetic heritage of a terrific big-game hunter and an excellent tracker. Therefore it must not have been very difficult to train the Cane Corso to search out a sow that had hidden herself in her lair to suckle her young. The feeding of these resistant and devoted helpers, capable of chasing prey for hours and then confronting it, was thought out with care. On returning from the hunt the dogs were given a large meal consisting of pieces of meat, dry bread, blood, and bones, with the addition of some nut-sized pieces of aged lard to replenish the energy the animals had spent in their exertion and put their fat reserves back into use. Before the hunt, depending on the geographical area, it was common to give the Cani Corsi a light ration of milk and serum mixed with oat bran or corn, sorghum, or barely flour to be sure that the dogs had no lack of sugary substances. Today this mixture is supplanted with a few lumps of sugar. This regimen gave the greatest return in so much as carbohydrates provide chemical energy, facilitate muscle contraction, and exercise their physiological superiority over fats and proteins because they can be put into use more rapidly and with lower oxygen consumption while producing the same amount of energy, thereby diminishing the cardio-respiratory workload. The more experienced hunters, observing the marks left on tree-trunks by a boar’s knife-sharp tusks, which, on adult individuals, could reach 15 centimeters in length, were able to identify with surprising accuracy the weight and the sex of the animal. They even could even localize a boar’s presence by studying the holes dug into the mud of the puddles near the rivers and creeks where the animal had rolled on the ground or the rocks and the tree trunks which it had rubbed up against to free its back of parasites and caked mud. The return of lost swine to the wild or the mating of domestic swine with nearby wild boars favored the formation of little herds of hybrids which were hunted in a distinctive and particular way. Prey younger than six months were called cinghialetti an animal older than six months and with developed tusks was called a porcastro; and the adult was known as a feral hog. Hunting these animals was less risky for the Cane Corso, and it was easier to uncover their tracks. Once they had been overtaken, they were taken down by a precise bite to the jugular in a relatively short time. A hunt carried out with the assistance of two Cani Corsi was wrapped up in an even more rapid and straightforward manner. One of the dogs gripped the cinghialetto or the porcastro by the ear or the snout, as usual, and the other finished it off by seizing it by the throat. The situation was changed when facing adult boars because their greater mass and superior strength put the dogs at a greater risk and sometimes even compromised the outcome of the hunt. Old males often lived in isolation, accompanied by a younger male called a "squire" in hunter’s jargon. They often had the upper hand against a pair of Cani Corsi, despite the exhausting skirmish and the numerous attempts to attack. Such boars called for a different tactic: the use of a pack of Cani Corsi well-accustomed to one another, or first using bloodhounds to flush out the prey and then chase down and hold it, giving the hunters a chance to catch up. The dog-keepers followed the hunters with leashed Cani Corsi, whom they unleashed at the right moment. The dogs then leapt on the prey, keeping it from escaping. The hunters then approached and finished the boar off by running it through with a skewer. In order to create an even more effective canine "material" and a better return for their efforts, hunter-breeders used to produce hybrids to be employed with the Cane Corso. Two famous hybrids that were certainly employed in this enterprise were the "mezzosangue" (half-blood) and the "mezzocorso" (half-corso). The "mezzosangue" was obtained by crossing a male Cane Corso with a female bloodhound. The "mezzocorso", on the other hand, was the cross between a male Cane Corso and a female Abruzzese white shepherd, which was called "mastiff" in many zones of southern Italy. These interventions were conceived of as industrial or first generation crossbreeds, and they presented a formidable synthesis of the best qualities of the molosser and the "mastiff" or the bloodhound. The "mezzosangue" acquired a remarkable aptitude for the chase, and tracked in silence with tenacity, while the "mezzocorso" improved its capabilities as a hunter and as a guard-dog, shepherd, cowherd, and protector. It was, in fact, sometimes employed to guard flocks of sheep or herds of buffalo and accompanied shepherds to mountain pastures, serving as their personal defense during the relocation of the flocks. Some authors say that the true Abruzzese shepherd is derived from the "mezzocorso". The ears of these white and black-speckled dogs are often cut, but the beautiful, thick, and expressive tail is left intact. |
|
============================================================================= Godiva Cane
Corsos Contact
us for a complementary Godiva Cane Corso brochure Copyright ©
2000-2001 Godiva Cane Corsos. All rights reserved.
Last Updated 07/03/2009 |