Procopio do Valle/Enio Monte:
"O grande livro do Fila Brasileiro", Rio de Janeiro, 1981

"Unwilling Accomplice"

Now we finally have it: "O grande livro do Fila Brasileiro", the Fila book by Prof Procopio do Valle and Enio Monte. As known the"father" of the breed, Dr. Paulo Santos Cruz, refused to participate in this venture,

What for the authors should have become the "bible of the new Filas", has instead become the unwilling accomplice to the old and authentic Fila Brasileiro. Who so ever publishes the original pictures of Filas as they were first known as the authors do, thereby provides the crucial proof of the fact that there can be no argument about the true type of this breed the authentic Fila 40 or 50 years ago looked like the authentic Fila looks today! Proportion and expression, size and substance are the same.

However, with this documentation, which constitutes the real value of the book, the authors are also pulling the rug out from under their own feet! Because what they show as in their own head, and body drawings is not only inconsistent in itself (even in the figures that are supposed to show the correct type of the breed there are substantial differences), but deviate exactly from the characteristics of the pure breed which the old Filas as well as today's purely bred ones represent in this volume.

What is supposed to be copied off the old, original Fila, is the author's version of a totally different dog! Not suprising then that among those dogs that don't fit the authentic type, there are some which have been explicitly named on the Brazilian "Fila bastard-list". Thus the conclusion stands even more unassailed after this book as before: whoever breeds correctly, will breed the Fila that has been in existence for decades. Whoever mixes with other breeds, breeds a completely different dog and therefore not the true Fila. The second main criticism of do Valle's and Monte's book, a majority of the present-day dogs which they present to us as good examples of their breed, have catastrophic hindquarters, either extremely straight or weak, always with a strongly falling - off croup.

That's not good publicity for the Fila.