Before you buy
How to Buy a Cane Corso Puppy
From the first message to the handover, exactly as it runs here. No waitlist, no litter reservations, and no deposit taken as standard.
You write, we answer, we ask you questions, you pick a puppy, you sign a contract and you collect it. There is no application to be approved for and no queue to join. We do not take reservations on unborn litters, so everything here is about a puppy that already exists.
1. You write to us
Through the form. That is where nearly everything arrives and it is the one we watch.
Both of us read them and either of us might reply. Realistically that is one to two days, not an hour. We are out with dogs for most of the day and we would rather answer properly in the evening than send you three words from a phone.
Tell us roughly where you are and which puppy caught your eye. That is enough to start.
2. We ask you why a Cane Corso
It is the first question every time, and it is not small talk.
The answers tell us almost everything. Somebody who says they want a big dog that looks serious is in a different conversation from somebody who has read about the breed and knows what an adolescent one is like at fourteen months. Neither answer ends it, but they lead to different questions.
If you have never owned a guardian breed, say so. It is not a disqualification and pretending otherwise wastes both our time. What the breed is actually like to live with.
3. The questionnaire
There is a written questionnaire and we will send it to you. It is short and it is not a formality.
We are trying to establish four things:
- Time. How many hours a day the dog would be alone. This breed does badly on its own and it will tell you so through your door frames.
- Accommodation. The home itself. Space, yard, fencing, stairs, and whether you own or rent, because a lease clause is the most common reason a sale here falls apart.
- Finances. Not the puppy. Whether the household can carry a dog that costs $1,500 to $2,600 a year for nine to twelve years. The full figure.
- Everyone else in the house. Children, their ages, other dogs, other animals, and whether everybody actually wants this.
What we are looking for is somebody who can be authoritative with a hundred-pound dog. Calm and consistent, not harsh, and not intimidated by their own animal. A Corso works out very quickly which it is dealing with. Who we say no to, and why.
4. You pick the puppy
You do, not us. We will tell you honestly what each one is like, including when the one you have picked is the pushiest in the litter and you have a three-year-old at home, but the choice is yours.
What we can add is the part the photographs cannot show: which one comes to the door first, which hangs back and watches, which plays hardest, which settles quickest. Ask about a specific puppy and you will get a straight description.
5. No deposit, and no litter reservations
Two things worth being plain about, because they are unusual.
We do not take a standard deposit. If anything is arranged it is agreed case by case and it is discussed with you rather than demanded up front. Nobody is asked to send money to hold a place in a queue.
We do not sell unborn litters. No reserving a puppy from a pairing that has not happened, and no taking money against a colour or a sex that might not appear. Every puppy on this site is on the ground, photographed, and old enough to be described honestly.
If none of the current litter suits you, tell us what you are after. We run one litter at a time so we can usually say what is coming and roughly when, and waiting is a better outcome than being sold a puppy that is not quite the one you wanted.
6. The contract, the chip and the guarantee
Three things, all of them in writing.
There is a signed contract. Not a receipt. You read it before anything is final and you keep a copy, and the contract you would be signing is on this site in full rather than being produced on the day.
Every puppy is microchipped before it leaves us, and the chip number is on your paperwork.
Every puppy is ICCF registered. The International Cane Corso Federation is the parent club registry for the breed in the United States, and the registration paperwork goes home with the dog.
There is a two week health guarantee, and it carries one condition: you must have the puppy seen by your own vet inside those two weeks. That is the whole of it. Book the appointment before the puppy arrives rather than after, because the guarantee runs from the day you take the dog and not from the day you get round to it.
The reason the condition exists is that an independent vet looking at the dog in week one is the only thing that protects either of us. It is also, separately, the right thing to do with a new puppy.
7. The name
Small thing, and people ask. We give each puppy a name and you choose from those rather than starting from scratch.
It sounds arbitrary until you have watched a litter for eight weeks. By the time a puppy leaves it answers to what it has been called since the week it opened its eyes, and eight weeks of recognition is worth more on day one in a strange house than a name you preferred.
8. Collection day
You come to us, and it is not a five minute exchange.
We spend proper time with you and the puppy together. Some of that is you getting a feel for the dog. Some of it, honestly, is us watching how you handle it, because how somebody picks up an eight-week-old tells you a good deal about the next twelve years.
In that time we go through temperament and handling with you directly: what to expect through adolescence, how to hold and settle a dog this size, what to do about the first night, and how to keep touching feet, ears, mouth and tail daily so that a hundred-pound adult never objects at the vet.
Bring a crate. That is the one thing we ask you to arrive with. Buy the adult size with a divider rather than a puppy one, because a Corso finishes at 25 to 27.5 inches at the shoulder and a small crate is money spent twice.
Handovers happen at the pickup spot we keep for them rather than inside our own home. Why that is.
Or we bring the puppy to you
Most of our buyers are not within driving distance and that changes nothing about the rest of it. The questionnaire, the contract, the chip and the guarantee are the same.
What changes is the last step: ground transport driven the whole way, or a flight nanny who carries the puppy in the cabin and hands it to you at arrivals. Never a cargo hold, at any distance.
Ask for a video call before you commit. We will do one with the puppy at whatever hour works in your time zone, and if you are buying a dog you have not stood next to you should insist on that from anybody, not only from us.
All three options, and how a puppy reaches your part of the country.
9. After the puppy goes home
Email and phone support, and it does not expire. People ring about food changes at four months, about adolescence at nine, and about a limp at two years. We would rather they did.
Two of the things we get asked most are already written down properly: what to feed and how much, and what the first year involves.
And if a placement fails, the dog comes back to us. We accept our own dogs back, at any age. It has never happened yet in thirteen years, which we are glad about, but the position stands and it is in the contract rather than being a nice sentence on a website.
The alternative is a Corso on a rehoming site at eighteen months, and we are not having one of ours end up there.
Start with a message
Tell us where you are and which puppy caught your eye. One of us will come back to you, usually inside a day or two.