previous to my pedigrees and dogues all I know is what I've read , I've not seen many pedigrees reliably go back further than ddb pedigrees ……I used to be pretty fluent in English mastiff pedigrees , saint Bernard pedigrees , bullmastiff pedigrees , american bulldog pedigrees , pit bull pedigrees , and newfoundland pedigrees .I have somewhere a decent collection of old and pretty uncommon dog books , this stuff was of interest to me at one time ……... in 1406 Edward Langley wrote a treatise titled "The Mayster of the Game and of hawks" , where he described the French alaunt as follows , "as a dog with a large and thick head and a short muzzle, which was remarkable for his courage, so that when he attacked an animal he hung on, and was used for bull baiting." he made the distinction between the English alaunt and the dogs exported to Bordeaux , whom R.H. Voss said were without doubt the predecessors to the dogue de Bordeaux ….. in 1557 dr. caius who wrote a study of british dogs for swiss naturalist conrad gesner where he described the mastyve or bulldog "as a vast, huge stubborn, ugly and eager dog, of a heavy and burdenous body, serviceable to bait and take the bull by the ear two dogs at most being sufficient for that purpose, however untamable the bull might be" ……… in 1585 Joducus Hondius created an engraving of two alaunts catching a boar …….
baiting was popular in England as early as 1154 , Bordeaux belonged to England from 1151-1411 ……
the dogue de Bordeaux was imported back to England as the dogue de Bordeaux in 1895 , they were last publicly fought as late as 1906 in france …….. those fighting dogs are the foundation of the ddb breed , they are in our pedigrees tigre , caporal l'imbattaile , sultan , lionne , neron , oural , porthos,….. early Bordeaux pedigrees are pretty much intact back to the late 1880's , thanks to folks like Bruno Cazalis , many of those fighting dogs I mention were photographed …...
as far as corso , I knew Mike sotille before during and after he brought his dogs here , I got a pretty good handle on what's in the cane corso breed …… they may be better at it today , but I seen some crazy results come back on dogs bred from many known generations 7-10 , that were obviously erroneous ……
here's what a dogue de bordeax looked like when I began , not an apartment dog for sure , outlast a hound without a problem , liked to kill animals , loving , trusting , sweet dog , I wish I could have her again ………….