Upwardly Mobile: Cane Corsos inch toward the Top 10 in popularity

It’s that time of year again: The American Kennel Club has released its list of the nation’s most popular breeds.

No news was the biggest news — in the top breeds, at least: The French Bulldog retained its primo slot for the fourth year, with the previous list topper, the Labrador Retriever, hanging in at number 2, followed by — no surprise — the Golden Retriever in third place.

There were no true Molossers in that tippy-top list — AKC officially recognizes a total of 205 breeds — although we should give a nod to a not-so-distant cousin, the Rottweiler, which has been hanging in at number 8 for something like a decade now.

But look just beyond those top-10 breeds, and there’s some big news for Molossers. Most of it isn’t good — at least in my opinion — for varying and in some cases diametrically opposite reasons.

Corso Cavalcade

Let’s start with the biggest headline: Cane Corsos jumped yet again in the rankings, from the 14th most popular breed in 2024 to the 11^th last year.

Let that sink in: # 11. That’s just inches away from the Top 10 of all breeds.

I don’t have to tell anyone who knows anything about Cane Corsos that this ongoing bump in quantity is not in most cases mirrored by quality. In fact, as I wrote a couple of weeks ago, the breed is only a shadow of what it was less than a decade ago, when it first became AKC recognized.

Far too many of the Corsos I come across now are Corsos in name only. Thank goodness they can be black-coated — otherwise, they would be mistaken for Boerboels (sorry, don’t consider that color authentic in this South African breed) or Bullmastiffs or Presa Canarios. And that’s a distinct possibility for far too many fawn Corsos, too.

What’s the solution? As far as I can see, there is none. The Corso has become a Rorschach test — people see in the dogs what they want or “like,” and breed accordingly. The most popular delusions? They seek a bandog, or a Neo that has been spun in the dryer for a few too many cycles. So they build this Mr. Potato Head version of a Molosser, completely ignoring the historical reality of an all-purpose Southern Italian farm dog. Claudio De Giuliani in his Corso book that I recently translated and published brilliantly refers to this phenomenon as “hypoxia” — a lack of oxygen. If I can mix the metaphor, the dogs are a lasagna of Molosser influences, one pasted atop the other, without any thought to athleticism or soundness — the metaphorical “oxygen” they are missing.

Sorry, I was ranting. Easy to do with Corsos.

The only other breed that logged an increase in popularity was the Boerboel, which sits at #112. In theory, Boerboel registrations could be much higher: Because of a very complicated scenario involving the stalling of the breed in its home country of South Africa, the U.S. is the only country that formally recognizes the breed. And though the stud book is still open, dogs whose pedigrees include some problematic dogs — that is, those implicated in the introduction of black coat color into the breed through crossbreeding — are rejected.

Slip-Sliding Away

Looking at the other Molosser breeds on the list, I felt like I needed a bit more context. So I went back to 2018, the last time I wrote a story about this much-ballyhooed AKC list. Eight years is not a lot of time, but it’s enough to show that the majority of Molosser breeds are experiencing a steady erosion in popularity — quite the opposite of what things were back then.

To be fair, in the last decade or so, AKC has been adding breeds with whiplash speed. Just this year, three new ones — the Russian Tsvetnaya Bolonka, Basset Fauve de Bretagne and Teddy Roosevelt Terrier — joined the ranks. In 2027, brace yourself for the Peruvian Inca Orchid.

All those are essentially table breeds, which may tell you something: Big dogs just aren’t in vogue anymore. They cost much more to feed and care for, and, in the case of Molossers, their serious nature requires experience and expertise — both qualities that are in short supply today.

Back to those canine newcomers: When they are added to AKC’s official roster, that at first affects the rarest breeds at the bottom of the list. In part, this may explain the relatively minor drops in the Neapolitan and Tibetan mastiffs, both demanding breeds in terms of their care and management. And many of the rarer newcomers stay in the triple-digits, at or near the bottom half of the list.

But as some breeds grow in popularity — or, as their AKC numbers begin to reflect the number of dogs actually on the ground — they begin to creep steadily upward. The Dogo Argentino is a case in point: It wasn’t even recognized until 2020, and it’s already in the middle of the pack at # 101.

What’s disturbing about the remaining Molossers is that they are losing ground in the top third of the list. The Bullmastiff has experienced the steepest decline since 2018, a whopping 35 percent. It’s not hard to argue that the Corso may be siphoning away some of these owners, as the two breeds are roughly the same height, though their morphology is — in theory — quite different. Then again, enterprising Corso breeders have poured so much Bullmastiff blood into their wall-papered pedigrees that those Corso converts are getting the best — or, more likely, worst — of both worlds.

Whaddaya mean I'm losing popularity?

Not far behind are the Mastiff and Dogue de Bordeaux, experiencing a 27 percent and 30 percent drop, respectively, from 2018. At first glance, it might seem surprising that these European stalwarts would, like the Bullmastiff, have secured such lofty rankings to begin with. But all three are well-established breeds both in type and temperament, and they have their diehard devotees. Like all things, however, that’s changing: As their humans go to that big dog run in the sky, they are being replaced by younger, Doodle-obsessed generations who don’t want to deal with drool or guarding instincts. Though they are — surprise! — footing several hundred dollars in grooming bills each month.

What’s the solution? Molosser owners need to remember that they themselves, along with their dogs, are ambassadors for their breeds. In person and online, they need to be helpful, supportive and — most important — welcoming to those seeking to learn more. Only then will their breed communities grow in number and in commitment to preserving and promoting these amazing guardians. Most have weathered centuries of war, starvation and uncertainty alongside the humans who nurtured them.

It would be heartbreaking — to say nothing of ironic — if their greatest enemy turns out to be the benign self-absorption of the modern era.