Corso Gate?
Jim Engel January 6, 2020
Forty years ago, in the late 70s, the United Schutzhund Clubs of America (USCA) emerged in response to the AKC squelching of GSDCA support for Schutzhund. This was conceived as a new beginning, a grassroots movement; in the spirit of unity the words "German Shepherd" were conspicuously absent. Indeed, you could almost hear Kumbaya gently floating on the breeze. For a few years all was well, but eventually the SV began incessantly tightening the noose, creating festering resentment which has persisted even to this day and is in fact the root of many of our most divisive issues. (Those envisioning the AKC as a player moving forward would do well to note the decades of flip flopping; they are perfectly capable of pulling the plug after a period of playing nice, seemingly having embraced the working concept.) Glossary
Is history repeating itself? Is an eerily similar false flag venture emerging to create another round of strife? It would seem so, for we now have before us a new, dissident, Cane Corso group launched by the same old shopworn Camper toadies, to be known (can you wait?) as Working Molossers United (WMU). United? Really? What is the reason for this transparent deception, this misleading name? Are they cognitively challenged, unable to see, from history if nothing else, what an enormous blunder this is? They say the other Molosser breeds are of course "welcome," but who is really going buy into that?
There would of course be nothing the least bit wrong with a legitimate Molosser umbrella structure, but all of the breeds would need to be cited on an equal footing in order to have credibility. None of these other breeds—the Dogue De Bordeaux, Dogo Argentino, Fila Brasileiro or the Presa Canario—is especially numerous and the potential for critical mass in a common support infrastructure could make a lot of sense. But this is not really what we have here; this reeks of the mother of all bait and switch schemes.
What is the real agenda? In order to drill down let us look to the top, inquire as to whether they are well intentioned but tone deaf or malignantly devious. Annie Wildmoser is an estranged CCAA (Cane Corso Association of America) member who has moved on to be AWDF Treasurer, AWMA Regional Director and now president of this incipient competitor for the CCAA. So where does her heart really lie? Is her newfound Malinois enthusiasm real, or just a political sham to provide Anne Camper with a reliable toady in the midst of the AWMA melt down? (Most of the other UMU officers have links of one sort or another to team Camper or are estranged from the CCAA: Meryl Cohen, Brian Agrelius, Alexandra Lowry, Stephanie Rudderow and Marisha Steward.)
The Wildmoser exit from the CCAA was tumultuous to say the very least. As treasurer and chair of the working committee she had control of the computer data bases, and executed a scorched earth policy that would have done Sherman proud, obliterating all of the data and sewing confusion and turmoil. The CCAA leadership was left with the task of picking up the pieces, finding a new Treasurer and rebuilding the books and data bases. As a result they were apparently a bit late with their AWDF dues, historically a fairly routine occurrence among the other clubs. (Even when property taxes are late there is always a process for restitution before confiscation; but the AWDF has become quite adept at altering the constitution and bylaws in about twenty minutes to accommodate their devious schemes.)
Is this in reality a stalking horse meant to replace the existing AWDF club, the CCAA, just as the Honda farce was conjured up as a Camper controlled USCA replacement? Is that the reason for the Wildmoser scorched earth exit; the sabotaging of the financial and performance records in order to discredit the CCAA as a pretext for replacement in the AWDF?
The inevitable consequence of this is a fracturing the incipient Cane Corso working movement into factions whose antagonisms will fester for decades, crippling the movement just as the Camper drama has shattered the working Malinois community. Potential new enthusiasts, seeing the strife, will gravitate to other breeds perceived as more serious or simply move on.
None of this is being done for the love of the breed, but rather for personal aggrandizement and the thrill of raw power. As for Annie Wildmoser, the trick is to keep track of which breed she is pretending to love at the moment as she wanders from one place to another, leaving strife and discord in her wake.
Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of all of this is that there seems to be no requirement, either for new clubs or ongoing participation, in terms of membership, trials, publications, yearly titles or an annual championship event. The Honda club, supposedly representing the German Shepherd, the vast majority of trainers today, is just a paper organization with an obscure board of officers and directors that nobody has ever heard of. At least three of the existing clubs—the Bouvier, Pit Bull and American Bulldog clubs—have more or less gone dark, yet still retain a place at the table and a vote. Will this new Corso club just be voted in out of the blue like the Honda club?
Is this latest episode of the ongoing Camper saga of intrigue and manipulation in the pursuit of influence and power finally a bridge too far? What began as opportunistic scavenging of the low hanging fruit has escalated to hunt and destroy, devious inside plots to attack an existing AWDF member club from within in order to discredit and replace it with another captive shell under control of the Camper cabal. Is there no one to step forward, willing and able to restore sanity, to reverse this spiral to oblivion?
CCAA Suspension of Annie Wildmoser
Queen Anne's War
Glossary
Orginizations and Conflicts
Legacy Lost, the Other Breeds
The Americans