Welcome to the Outlaw Family
I’d like to welcome you to the Outlaw family. I’m CJ, and after serving in our nation’s 82nd Airborne I joined Mike at Outlaw to help insure the Traditional Cane Corso would always have a place. The Cane Corso (CC) is often referred to as “the dog of war” from the Roman times. I believe this to be true, but that isn’t the point I’m making. As a Veteran of war myself, I felt like I connected to the Traditional CC on a more personal level. The CC is an ancient breed developed for specific tasks that in today’s structure of society needed to find other jobs it could perform well or be retired to history. This truth I see mirrored in my own life. I decided the CC could benefit from my service, my heritage, and my experience thereby I could serve again!
I grew up in the Ozarks of Missouri on a family farm in a culture heavily dependent on dogs. One could say that I was bred to be a dog man. Both sides of my Grandparents bred their own dogs for specific tasks. My very first dog was a blue heeler borrowed from my daddy as I grew from toddler to child. We logged countless miles in the hills surrounding my house. He protected me from snakes and afforded me safe childhood explorations.
I vaguely remember being a young boy of about three or four years on a coon hunt with my Daddy, Grandpa, and a few indiscernible faces of their friends. I remember the calling of the dogs as they bayed a coon signaling the end of the hunt was near. My Grandpa Bill also bred his own Brittany Bird dogs. I used to love walking up to the kennels to get the puppy kisses they always offered.
My Grandpa, “Pawp”, was a cattle farmer and avid coyote hunting enthusiast. I grew up watching him and my uncles go for days at a time running their hounds across the peaks of the Ozark mountains and through the springs and creek steeped valleys surrounding their homes. The dogs he bred and raised were legend in their own right, and complete in their ability to execute the hunt better than typical. I remember them talking proudly about their pairings and breeding techniques, and how specifically they knew the dogs they bred and how they understood each characteristic they were looking for. The mornings frost still on the windshields we would drive the high ridge roads with our windows down listening to the signaled calls of the dogs telling about the prey they were pursuing and the avid details that only a dog man of that caliber could determine. These are some of the fondest memories I have from my earliest childhood days. A diet of hardboiled eggs, summer sausage, and homemade soup from the thermos was enough to fuel the hunt for days on end.
I was a young boy of about twelve when I made my first pairing of my own hunting beagles to roam the fields and wood lines for bouncing cottontail. It wasn’t long after that I was involved with the pairing of hunting and retrieving labs for pheasant, quail, duck, and anything else we could get to fall from the sky that needed retrieving.
After serving in the Army for a few years and a prolonged deployment to Iraq, I was medically retired and felt a need for being part of something more constructive. When I found Mike CEO and founder of Outlaw Cane Corsos, we hit it off from the very beginning in the way only true dog men could. Our very first conversations consisted of breeding techniques, drives, beneficial and deleterious characteristics and of course genetics. Together, we have studied the earliest findings from Dr. Breber and the definitions and standards he has published on the Traditional Cane Corso. We have studied articles, published writings and peer-reviewed study’s on the matter of genetics to garner the best comprehensive understanding of how to marry the knowledge of ancient breeding techniques and the findings of today’s scientific discoveries in the field of genetics. There is no corner we have left unturned in hunting out the very best ways to develop this breed, and target specific beneficial alleles tied to the temperament and most desirable characteristics that have made the Traditional CC, and the Outlaw Bloodline, so well known. Together, we have made specific pairings to enhance the Traditional CC and those characteristics that make it so well versed in today’s family settings. We strive to be experts in our fields of study to best serve the dogs we love and the families we get to enrich with our devoted service. Now, our collected knowledge and study has accumulated to the tune of over half a century of experience breeding dogs to be greater than their peers.
I am personally dedicated to the time-tested ancient breeding techniques that have resulted in every single pure-bred breed that walks the face of the earth today. I’m equally dedicated to the further enhancement of the Traditional Cane Corso with temperament characteristics and workability being the epicenter of breeding selections. Through these criteria and techniques I will continue to chisel out the very best qualities that make this ancient breed so desirable, and to keep this breed true to the Traditional Cane Corso of renown. I will not succumb to the pressures of kennel clubs to select from their self-imposed standards of confirmation to define this ancient working breed.
Rest assured that time will be on our side in the fact that traditional values of the Cane Corso will prove to be victorious winning peoples hearts and loyalties outside of physical confirmation that depart from the standards that developed them into todays highly sought after working elite. The Outlaw Bloodline will continue to stand alone committed to this ancient breed and by extension each of the families I get to bless with this amazing Traditional Cane Corso.
