Starting in about 1974, Scorpio Jones, Lucas Lopez, and Gypsy Stratten decided to create a dog breed for Personal Pet Protection. The original name of the Canis Panther was Devil Dog, as Noted in Para Bellum Kennel’s Documentary. Gypsy fought this decision because the breed was meant for the church lady, and no church lady will buy a dog called Devil Dog. According to Gypsy, Scorpio agreed and told him to name the breed. So, having seen the feline elegance of the dogs, and wanting to use some science in the breed creation, Gypsy settled on calling them Canis Panthers.

The first dogs used were a Dobermann bitch named Sugar and a half Great Dane Half Lab named Gorilla. From the first litter of these dogs a pick male, Mighty Joe, and a pick Female, Missy were selected and bred together. The resulting puppies were the first Canis Panthers. It’s important to note that more dogs were brought in down the line and bred into the mix. Allegedly, Scorpio got complaints that the dogs were too big for the Chicago homes they were being placed in, so he decided to use American Pit Bull Terrier to shrink the breed. Shortly after this, according to numerous secondary sources, the APBT was swapped out for American Staffordshire Terrier. Some breeders believe that since Labrador could also have shrunk the breed, there was a desire to bring in some of the gladiator traits such as elastic skin and pain tolerance, but this is unproven by any source.

Scorpio was the breeder and primary decision maker for the breed’s creation. Lucas Lopez was a breeder, and Gypsy was a trainer and advisor to Scorpio. It is said that Mr. Lopez was like a vault, absolutely trustworthy, and Scorpio depended on him to keep dogs around that Scorpio was not immediately working with himself.

Sources are sporadic, but sometime in the late 80s or 90s Gypsy and Scorpio apparently had a falling out. The nature of the split is said to be because Gypsy and his wife Lori were given some dogs by Scorpio and they went to Scorpio’s house some time after this and told him that the dogs needed to be pedigreed and made official, which offended Scorpio(according to Tim Jones). This creates a problem since, as of January 2024, there are no living primary sources on the matter. There is photo evidence the two had begun working together after their split, and considering by all accounts they were absolute best friends before the split, we find this to be a likely truth.

What is known for sure, is that in the 1990s, Gypsy and Lori began Rock Of Ages Kennel, while Scorpio seems to have never established a formal kennel or kennel club. This leads to a second point of conflict, as there is debate about the intentions and direction of Gypsy after the split, however, every Canis Panther outside of Chicago until 2022 was from Rock of Ages, so regardless of what happened, the breed we all fell in love with is essentially the Gypsy concept of the Canis Panther, whether that’s a mirror image of what Scorpio had planned or his own machinations, nobody can say with certainty, though Gypsy speaks of Scorpio with great veneration.

Gypsy is accused of breeding in substantial amounts of Labrador and Great Dane, but it also happens that the primary accuser, a puppy salesman(clarification: not a breeder) named JD, has a strong bias toward breeding in the American Pit Bull Terrier, despite the fact that the Staffordshire Terrier was the de facto pick of the earlier breeding efforts. Gypsy has defended himself against these accusations by stating that “the Lab is one of the greatest working dogs on the planet”. On the grounds of adding more Dane, Tim Jones says that as Scorpio was trying to make the dogs smaller, he gave ten of the older dogs to Gypsy, their chief flaw being they were too big for what Scorpio wanted to do. This may vindicate Gypsy as he may have not bred in more Dane, but simply started with the Dane heavy dogs to begin with. Tim’s dogs are also heavy in Dane, so heavy in fact that puppies coming from his kennel are showing to be 75% or more Great Dane.

In 2009 Scorpio passed away from according to Tim Jones, his brother, MRSA and complications from obesity. He is survived by his brother Tim, his wife, and their children. Gypsy died January 4th, 2024 to pancreatic cancer. We do not know the time or manner of Lucas Lopez’ death at this time.

HISTORIC PHOTOS (provided generously by Rock of Ages Kennel, seriously, go check them out)

In 2016, Hailea, a friend of Taylor Lee of Para Bellum Kennel, showed him the Canis Panther and he became infatuated. Rock Of Ages’ Website mentions a Madonna kennel but gives no details, and Para Bellum Kennel got a Canis Panther from NorCal Canis Panthers who had only started 2 or so years prior, so, to our knowledge, 2014 represents the official start of the second generation of Canis Panther breeders. There are several intermediate breeders who came and left before 2016 such as Chris Tucker, but their involvement did not last into the mid 2020s. The second generation of Canis Panther breeders saw rapid expansion up until about 2020, with the involvement of new faces like Norcal Canis Panthers, Para Bellum Kennel, Maverick Dobermanns, and Swedish Panthers. Other Kennels have used the Canis Panther as a transitional force for their own breed creation such as War Ready K9.

In 2019 the likes of Lew Glasgow, Chris Tucker, and Taylor Lee created the Canis Panther Club of America. The club added new members, Notably Kris Dani of Maverick Dobermanns who was dating Taylor Lee at the time. The latter two wrote the CPCA bylaws and breed standard for the Canis Panther with some input from others.

In 2023 the CPCA was dissolved and Taylor, Kris, and some new faces moved on to create the Fellowship of the Canis Panther(named by Panos Christou).