So, you have decided to get yourself a company in the form of a dog. If you love dogs then the breed boxer is for you. A boxer is a medium sized dog with a tight fit coat and strong limbs. Their face generally resembles a bulldog. The tales are docked and sometimes their ears too. But they normally have drop ears. Alertness is what can be seen on their very face itself. Boxers are highly adjustable and can adjust in almost any kind of environment. ‘A people’s dog’ is what a boxer is because it has a tendency to behave well enough with people and even the other dogs too. Boxer – the breed is popular all over. Boxers die to play and are a good companion to the elders as well as the children.

Boxer males are generally 22.5 to 25 inches and female boxers are 21 to 23.5 inches in height with male boxers weighing 65 to 80 lbs and female boxers weighing 50 to 65 lbs. They generally have a black patch on their faces. Sometimes pure white puppies are born, but this rarely happens. Their coat is smooth, shiny and easy to take care of.

The Boxer is an amazing dog and is extremely playful, energetic and definitely a handful (in a good way of course). This breed if dog is extremely loyal and when a friendship is built it lasts forever. The boxer is very unique and not for everyone, if you’re a new owner of a boxer you have to be aware that they need a lot of attention and training. They are extremely intelligent dogs which can work to your advantage when it comes to training, but then again can be very disadvantageous as they know how to use their intelligence to get what they want.

Boxer dog training consists of training them up to become guard dogs, this is their main profession if you like. People who don’t know boxers tend to assume that they are naturally aggressive when they are in fact the opposite and couldn’t be more playful than any other dog! Because of their good stature and aggressive look, people are automatically assuming this dog could do more harm than good. If your boxer isn’t trained properly then he just might.

The truth is that in most known cases this disease is not life threatening but your Boxer could become very seriously ill. Kennel cough normally lasts from one to two weeks and the most prevalent characteristic is the dog’s severe coughing. The best way to cure kennel cough is to prevent it from occurring in the first place.

Probably the last thing you want to think about as you go to buy a new Boxer pup are the health concerns associated with the breed.  But taking the time to learn what problems the Boxer is prone to before can save a lot of heartache and money at a later date, as well as a lot of pain and suffering for the Boxer.  One of the most well known problems that Boxers in particular can suffer from is something called Hip Dysplasia (Dis-plas-i-a).  It is the number one cause of lameness in the back legs of the dog and something which all Boxer owners should be aware of from day one. 

Hip Dysplasia is an arthritic condition stemming from a looseness in the hip itself.  It happens in the ball and socket joint that connects with the pelvis.  Over time the tissue that holds these together becomes thinner and leads to abnormalities in the leg bone, hip and the actual joint. Researchers who have studied Hip Dysplasia generally agree that it occurs more in older dogs and after a long time causes arthritic problems for the dog.  They also agree in the fact that male Boxer dogs are more prone to this ailment than their female counterparts.

Spare a thought for a much maligned branch of the Boxer family; the pure white Boxer. There has been so much misinformation about the white Boxer that some clarification is in order.

In the United States of America alone, white Boxers make up 25% of the Boxer population, yet these dogs are still being sold to unsuspecting buyers as something quite rare and altogether unique. The pure white Boxer in fact is not rare at all, so don’t let unscrupulous Boxer breeders try to pull a fast one. Although the color of a Boxer does not determine its’ individual personality or all those other Boxer traits we know and love, much has been published about the White Boxer. In many cases they are listed as rare, but the fact is that they have been a part of the breed as long as the Boxer breed has been around. The reason some Boxers are white is quite easy to explain and has to do with history. Most experts in the field firmly believe that an early type of Boxer was crossed with the English Bulldog in the first part of the nineteenth century, and it was possible to register the result of this as a Boxer in Germany until 1925.

Would you like to eat that? So why give it to a loved and trusted member of the family? Pet food supplies is today big business but it hasn’t always been that way. In the first half of the twentieth century food manufacturers had an enormous problem with food they couldn’t sell. It was either contaminated with disease or pesticide, rotten or contained such things as heart and brains and eyes that the general public didn’t particularly enjoy eating. Then some bright spark (I imagine his family is now stinking rich) had the idea of packaging all this rotten, disgusting and potentially lethal offal into a can and marketing it as ‘pet food’. The rest is history. The bottom line is this: if you wouldn’t eat it, don’t give it to your pet.