About
Alex and Chico, Riverside
Brothers, fifteen years with the breed and thirteen breeding it, working out of our own home with one litter at a time.
We’re Alex and Chico, brothers in Riverside, California. We have kept Cane Corsos for fifteen years and bred them for thirteen. Seven adults live here with us, this is what we both do full time, and we have raised around thirteen litters in that time.
Where it started
With the neighbours, when we were kids. They had big dogs and we were round there constantly, and that was the whole of it. We wanted one before we understood anything about breeds.
Fifteen years ago we got Milon, our first Corso. He is still here, still active, and he has nothing to do with the litter on this site. He is simply the dog who started it, and the reason there are seven of them in the house now instead of one.
Breeding came two years after that, which is the right way round. We had lived with the breed for a while before we bred a single litter, and there is a difference between people who chose a breed and people who had one first.
The dogs who live here
Seven adults: four females and three males. Khalifa, Elsa, Bourbon, Kartelli, Yugo, Havoc and Vassi.
They are not stock. They live in the house, they are on the walks, they are in the way in the kitchen, and every one of them will be here for the rest of its life. That is the part that decides how many litters we can honestly run, because seven adults and a litter is already a full house.
The puppies on this site come from Khalifa, Vassi and Elsa. All three were bred by us, from our own line, so we did not buy in a dog and start advertising. We know what their parents were like to live with because we lived with them.
They are ICCF registered, and so are the puppies. The International Cane Corso Federation is the parent club registry for the breed in the United States, and the paperwork goes home with the dog rather than being promised and posted later.
What a day here looks like
Both of us do all of it. Feeding, walks, the vet runs, the messages, the handovers. There is no division where one brother does the dogs and the other does the buyers, so whoever you speak to is somebody who was in with that litter this morning.
We do not have other jobs. This is it, which is the only reason the hours work: somebody is with the puppies essentially all day, and on the rare occasion we both have to be out, family cover it. They have grown up around big dogs too, so it is not a stranger in the room.
That is the honest answer to how puppies get socialised. Not a programme with a name. Just people being in the room, all day, from the week they are born.
How the house is set up
Three parts to it.
A sleeping area, a play area, and the rest of the house, which they have the run of with us. Young puppies sleep with their mother. As they grow they move into their own space, which is most of what makes the transition to your crate straightforward rather than traumatic.
Then there is a separate spot, away from the living space, where the photographs are taken and where families collect. It exists for a reason worth explaining rather than glossing over.
You collect from us, just not from our living room
Southern California buyers come to us in person and we would rather they did. The handover happens at a spot we keep for it, and not in the house, because a litter that has had one round of shots is not protected yet.
Parvovirus survives on shoes, on clothing and on ground for months. Every visitor walking through the room where puppies sleep is a chance to carry something in, and the puppies most at risk are the ones still waiting on their second DHPP. It is the single most avoidable thing that goes wrong with a litter.
So the pickup spot is cleaned between families and the puppies do not live in it. You get as long as you want with the dog, we go through the health record together, and you leave with everything written down.
Some people expect a tour of the house and we understand why. We would rather explain this than hand you a puppy that picked something up on its last day with us.
Veterinary care
Our dogs are seen by Riverside Regional Veterinary Group. They give the shots, and the dates on the record that goes home with your puppy are the dates in their notes.
What we do not do is diagnose anything ourselves. If something is wrong with a puppy it goes to a vet, not to a forum, and that has been the rule here for thirteen years.
The health picture across the breed, and what the record actually contains.
Thirteen litters
Around thirteen litters and something over sixty puppies in thirteen years. Work out the average and you will see that we are not running this at volume, which is deliberate.
A fair number of those puppies went to people who already had one of ours and came back for a second, some as pets and some to breed themselves. That is the only measure of this we actually trust. Anybody can collect a testimonial. Somebody buying a second dog from you nine years later has lived with the first one.
Who we say no to
We screen, and it is not a formality, so it is fairer to tell you now than at the end of a conversation.
What we are looking for is somebody who can be authoritative with a hundred-pound dog. Not harsh, and not experienced in the sense of having titles, but calm and consistent and not intimidated by their own animal. A Corso works out very quickly which it is dealing with.
We would rather place with people who have owned a big breed before, and we say so plainly. We do take first-time owners who come through screening well, and we have, but we ask more questions of them and some of those conversations end with us saying this is not the breed for right now.
None of that is us being precious. A Corso that goes to the wrong household comes back at eighteen months as an untrained adolescent, and that is a far worse outcome for everybody than an awkward call in week six. Who should buy a different breed.
What we do not do
We do not mass produce. One litter at a time, seven adults, and no plans to change that.
We do not sell trained protection dogs, we have no decoy and no bite sport club, and we will say so rather than take the order. Why, at length.
We do not breed crosses. If a cross is what you want, we are the wrong kennel.
And we do not guarantee an adult weight, a temperament or a colour outcome, because nobody honestly can. We will tell you the range the breed sits in and what the parents are like, which is the same answer without the promise attached.
Where to find us
We are in Riverside, California, and we are on Facebook as Notorious X Kennels, which is where the day to day of this ends up: litters as they arrive, dogs growing up, families collecting.
Ring or write and you get one of us, usually the same day. (742) 306-3184, or the form. What happens after that.
Ask us anything
Thirteen years of it between us, and we answer these ourselves. (742) 306-3184.