Once upon a time there was a country dog...the story of
the cane corso seems endless. No one knows when its ancient history began.
Certainly it mixed up with the history of so many molossers; then, little by
little, each one became specialized in different jobs and functions. On the
contrary, a precise date can be given to the beginning of its modern history,
and that is not more than thirty years old. It is not the beginning of the
story, it should be made clear, but rather the beginning of an awareness; an
understanding that the corso, a country dog that had been preserved for
hundreds, if not thousands, of years, existed, but was death’s door. Among
those few who, at a certain point, realized what was happening was Vito Indiveri,
a traveling salesman from Monopoli (BA) who...but let’s let him be the one to
tell us his story. Let’s give him, an eyewitness and perhaps among the
principle craftsman of the breed’s recovery, the task of telling us how it
happened, of telling us what this dog used to be like, compared to today, where
he found it, who had preserved it, and how it was recovered.
"I had a vague memory of corsi," Indiveri tells
us, "mine was a family of carters and horse merchants and my ancestors used
to have them in the courtyard to guard the horses. But with the arrival of the
automobile, these two activities vanished, and I found myself doing the work of
a traveling salesman. I sold, and I still sell, linens, but only in the
countryside, in the most remote areas. I combed all of the regions of the south,
all the way to Sicily, and I pushed into Umbria, Abruzzo, and Molise. It was on
a farm in Apricena (FG), owned by Michele Padula, that I found the first corso
and recognized in it my grandparents’ dog."
From that moment Indiveri took to recording everything the
saw with stubborn meticulousness. He took notes and photographs, he examined and
studied, and, step by step, he drew up a mental map of the "stocks" of
corsi and of the families that possessed them as if they were the family gold,
jealously preserved and handed down from father to son: never given to anyone
who was not the closest of kin: son, brother, or grandson. This was the
situation everywhere, in Foggiano as in Campania, in Basilicata as in Calabria.
These families would only mate subjects of a very tight consanguinity in order
not to owe anything to anyone. "Only once in a while," says Indiveri
"would they exchange pups at the fairs, in order to take on new blood. They
traded a pup for the pup of another family or they obtained one in exchange for
a piece of cheese or a sack of grain." In twenty years of research Vito
Indoveri has organized his very own personal "ENCI", just for corsi.
Its posters, for him, contain the names of country families. He has
reconstructed the genealogy of the "stocks" through a meticulous
census, putting to use the memories of the country folk and verifying every step
by hand until he found, dead or alive, every subject that ever left the home
barnyard.
"I went to look for some families in places where no
one would have imagined that were people. They were genuine people, they still
lived with their horse in their house." So you’re sure that the corsi
that these people had on hand were pure? "I have never seen a boxer, a
mastiff, or a rottweiler in the countryside: try to imagine one in some of those
places! It has to be said, too, that these people did not raise dogs for profit;
they had one or two litters a year, just to ensure themselves some replacements,
just for their own guarding needs, to protect the herds and to hunt for badger
and boar."
And what was the corso like back then? Can you describe
it?
"The morphology is more or less what it is. Today’s
dog presents itself better, because it no longer eats bread and water or bran
and whey, so it is esthetically improved because it is better take care of. But
the model is what it is. Back then the corsi had slightly converging cranio-facial
axes, a short muzzle, slightly protruding teeth, and it was normal for a dog to
be constructed and selected so that it could be a holding dog. The height was
the same as it is today, powerful musculature, lean, without any folds in the
skin, nor wrinkles, the general appearance was of a very agile dog, always ready
to leap."
So the standard is adequate as it is?
"Of course! The standard was based on Pugliese dogs
or dogs coming from Puglia, thanks to the work of Perricone, Vandoni, and
Morsiani, who examined a large number of sire subjects, sons and grandsons of
those dogs who were in the hands of the country folk. Gandolfi, Casolino,
Malavasia and even the SACC can testify to this."
Absolutely nothing should be changed?
"Absolutely not! And I do not see a reason to do so,
given that we have recovered the reproducers through meticulous research! The
corsi of today are the direct descendents of the corsi of yesterday. Not only us
but also the northern breeders have been able to see the fathers and the
grandfathers of the dogs that we are currently breeding, whose blood, the
country families assure us, has never been contaminated. Look at them here –
and Indiveri points them out – the sons of Plud, the grandsons of Bruno, of
Leone, and of Saturno, There are the same ones that are being bred by the
country families of Alfonso Comer, Umberto Leone, Pinuccio Palumbo, the
Principe, and many others. They are the same as those that I and many other
Pugliese breeders have. They are the same ones that a large number of southern
breeders brought north, thanks to the SACC’s guidance, in order to ensure the
preservation and the definitive recovery of the breed. I read the standard many
years ago and I found that it faithfully reflected the morphology and the
character of our dog. If it had not been so, do you think that it would have
agreed with me? Being a southerner, attached to tradition, as certainly I am, I
would have unleashed who knows what kind of battle years ago, not letting
anyone, within the limits of my capabilities, denature and radically change the
dog of our fathers. Anyone who wants to change the standard should present
himself then, with his first and last name, titles and references, and above
all, proof and documentation, and then we will listen to him."