THE PRESA CANARIO AND ITS SELECTION

To breed good Presa Canario dogs is not easy task.  For starters, the most important thing   is to find a truly outstanding female of presa, and mate it with a male really quality, and preferably similar to the female.     The tendency of many people who start in the breed is to buy a puppy female and a puppy male, and when they are old enough they show them in exhibitions, and when the female is the second or third heat, they breed them and wait.  And in the first thing they think is in money to be gained from the litter.

 Clearly these people are doomed to failure.  Like any working breed (the Perro de Presa Canario must be it above any other consideration), the male, just like the female, must conform to the standard, be free of hip dysplasia, its character must be as balanced as possible (generally our breed is it, but there are also mad dogs, or shy, product of bad breed), and its temperament against all proof.                                             The Perro de Presa Canario not only must bark to the enemy and to defend its territory, once trained must go to the attack with all its consequences.  The frontal attack and without reserves is the desirable one, and the pursuit of the simulated delinquent.

 I would recommend to not breeding with presas (males and females) who have not been x-rayed for hip, and trained minimally in obedience, attacks and persecution.  This premise most of the breeders in the Canary Islands, Spain in general, and abroad, is not accomplished with excessive frequency.  Thus we find us with a high index of dysplastic dogs in one or another degree and without temperament.                         Known it is that the presa  canario  of the past had a high territorial instinct and they did not know the fear. But in the past is that no one thought to breed with a male and a female that were really outstanding in every way.

  Today, too often, are used in the breeding presas that hace not value.  And it has its explanation.  In the last times, have proliferated everywhere breeders  who are unfamiliar whit all or nearly all, of the Presa Canario, who desire to make  money is the only thing that moves them.                                                  One that is already more than a quarter of century breeding and selecting presas, in front at such spectacle is stunned.

  We have to start accepting that the canine breed called Presa Canario is not consolidated, that the genetic fixation has still not been achieved, that the good specimen (of both sexes) are a minority, that generation after generation we are forced to discard good part of the puppies at the age of a year (approximately) because they do not have the quality due the defects that have been exposed, -and unfortunately there are many  breeders that close their eyes and sell everything they produce -.

Manuel Curtó Gracia

January 2001