I first met the Cane Corso in 1993 and it was love at first sight. That love never left me. In 1995 I got my first own Cane Corso, Delilah. She came into my live as a puppy from about 6 weeks and it was love at first sight again. There was no Dutch literature about the breed and I did not know the Italian language. There were not many books, so I have spent a lot of time and trouble learning about the breed. But with dictionaries and later internet translation programs, I started to translate. The first thing I noticed, is that most books are written by breeders, who love to take the credit for the recovery of the breed, while they left out the important names of people that were involved in this recovery. So next to the enormous job of translating, I had to filter the information and have it verified, before the actual truth surfaced. Today with the internet, new owners don’t have to work so hard anymore to get to some information about the breed. But I am happy that I had to do it. The knowledge is firsthand and I will always remember that better, then second hand knowledge from just reading a book. And I can sure use that knowledge for my own breeding.
Over the years, I studied the breed and the good and the bad things about the breed and its bloodlines. I noticed that most dogs did not look a like. The breedstandard is however very clear about what the Cane Corso should look like.
After being active in the breed in Holland for over 10 years, I moved to Matera Italy, to live in the centre of the origin of the breed, from where I can easily travel in the biggest part of South Italy in a morning to still find the original Cane Corso to enhance my kennel and breed Cane Corso, the way Cane Corso was meant to be.
Even though I live in the kitchen of the origin of the breed, and have very good contacs with many of the original breeders here, I won’t pass any oportunity to see Cane Corsos outside Italy. Many of the pups I have breed are all over the world and it is important for me to keep an eye on them and see their offspring, so that I can reach back to my own blood to keep my own previous selection strong in my kennel. Many old breeders here in Italy breed to their own ideals, which is not always according to the standard. The old blood is very important to maintain the original strong stable character. This because over the entire world I see fear or characters that are no way close to the original Corso character. My goal is to breed according to the standard and keep the original character.
Since I breed to preserve the original fearless strong character, these pups might not be for everybody. Experience is a must.
After collecting pedigrees from all over the world on my personal computer, to understand the bloodlines better, I started the online pedigree database www.canecorsopedigree.com in 2006. To share this work with the rest of the world, I started the database online, which by now (2020) almost 90,000 pedigrees online. I still have thousands of pedigrees to add, that are sent to me from all over the world and which I collect from online databases from kennelclubs. Anyone can use this database to look into more generations of pedigrees than are ever possible on paper. And anyone can have his dog’s pedigree added by sending a copy of his FCI/AKC/ICCF pedigree to info@canecorsopedigree.com .
Have fun with our site. If you have any questions regarding the breed or our own dogs, e-mail us. We will answer every serious question. Enjoy your reading
Nancy Koper
canecorsonancy@outlook.it