I've been wanting to get a new boxer puppy after my last one died a year or so ago at around 13 years old. I'm looking for suggestions for local breeders and about maybe some boxer rescue organizations in NC. Also, I'm almost afraid of rescuing one for fear of it having been abused and meaner than one I would have raised from a pup but at the same time hate for another one to be killed that I could have rescued. Any comments on that?

Thanks for any help/suggestions

11/15/2007 10:45:35 AM

I adopted a scottish terrier (notoriously stubborn) that was abandoned and abused. She's turned out to be the most loving dogs I've ever had. I know this isn't a boxer, but it's just food for thought.

11/15/2007 11:07:17 AM

Yeah, that's the kind of info I'm interested in. My gf has adopted both of her cats and her dog, all of which are great pets. Her mom has done the same with 3 dogs in the last year and all have been fine... I think I'll plan on rescuing one assuming I can find one young enough. These dogs are just too stubborn to have any chance of teaching them much if they're too old..not to mention the behavioral issues that could come along with it

11/15/2007 11:10:29 AM

watch out, they can and will consume entire sleeves of golf balls

11/15/2007 11:27:53 AM

hehe, bet those came out lovely

11/15/2007 11:32:18 AM

its an inside joke sort of...BobbyDigital has a boxer and when we all three had a bachelor pad, we came home one day to find three torn open sleeves of golf balls and one dog with a confused and funny look on his face sitting on the couch

our immediate conclusion was HOLY SHIT THAT MOTHERFUCKER ATE 9 GOLF BALLS

and laughing hysterically at the thought of them having to come out, or, more likely, having to take him to the vet to get them removed

and then we looked around and they were all under the couch

so there were no unintentional canine anal beads

[Edited on November 15, 2007 at 11:43 AM. Reason : .]

11/15/2007 11:42:55 AM

haha my brothers dog is about 6 months old and gets into everything. he always brings big ass branches and dead animals and stuff like that home to us and tries to give them to us. Last week he shows up with the downspout of a gutter off the side of the house lol. He's been chewing on that thing for like a week and has pretty much destroyed it.. That one I can say I've never seen before

11/15/2007 11:52:08 AM

our dog gets into our pantry every once in a while and eats random stuff. one time he ate like half a bag of dry barley. he was pooping barley for days.

he was basically ignored for the first 6 years of his life. but he is the best dog ever. totally house broken (he can hold it for 12 hours easily without even caring), incredibly friendly, and is learning new tricks/words at 8 years old.

also, i'd love to have a boxer, maybe once we move into a bigger place. we were worried about the drool, but i've heard it's not as bad as we thought. a boxer/pit mix would be nice.

11/15/2007 12:15:33 PM

actual boxer owners can probably speak more on this, but they are known as very hyper energetic dogs, so make sure you have enough room for them to be themselves

11/15/2007 12:16:50 PM

Yeah, the last one I had had more energy at 10 years old than a lot of dogs do ever.. that's one thing I love about them. They're like 50lb lap dogs lol. They're the most stubborn dogs ever though..it wouldn't be so annoying if they weren't smart, but my last one knew exactly what I was telling him to do and would just ignore me most of the time.

Ah well, gonna try to find one from a rescue group around here that's young... I've never had good luck with rescuing any animals that were over a year or so old

[Edited on November 15, 2007 at 12:21 PM. Reason : and I've got plenty of room, few acres in the middle of no where basically]

11/15/2007 12:20:58 PM

we got a boxer, lab mix from a charlotte rescue a few months ago. She's had some problems with housetraining and separation anxiety but I love how energetic she is

[Edited on November 15, 2007 at 12:27 PM. Reason : And she's gone through 2 metal crates in 4 months]

11/15/2007 12:26:25 PM

how often do you leave her in the crate??

11/15/2007 2:04:05 PM

1: boxers are the best dogs ever [/bias opinion]

2: you can look at http://www.cbr.homestead.com for rescues (they have some really young ones sometimes) - we did get ours as a puppy from a breeder, but now that i've found that website, i know i'll rescue one from here on (and i'll never have anything but a boxer)... my parents have a rescue boxer and he's great too (never been around any rescue that wasn't)

11/15/2007 2:04:19 PM

good to hear that, I'm def leaning towards rescuing even more now.. thanks for the link

11/15/2007 2:05:14 PM

get a rescue

11/15/2007 2:13:20 PM

planning on it for sure now after reading some more on a few boxer forums. now I just gotta find one young enough to my liking

11/15/2007 2:24:43 PM

Quote :

"how often do you leave her in the crate??"

9-5 tuesday and thursday. couple hours at a time here and there the rest of the week. i want to get to the point where we can leave her in the house while we're gone, but when we first got her she wasn't house trained at all and wanted to get that far before leaving her out in the house all day. she's mostly trained now but every now and then she'll poop in the house for no good reason. the other thing is when we do leave her alone in the cage, she gets anxious. i don't know if it's a small space thing or if it's a being alone thing. so i don't want to leave her in the house while we're gone and she still tear up the place. it's frustrating, but i love having a dog, so i'll put up with it

[Edited on November 15, 2007 at 3:21 PM. Reason : .]

11/15/2007 3:18:30 PM

The last one I had was potty trained the fastest I've ever seen any dog be. It may sound cruel, but my dad just put his face in the pee a few times and put him outside and he picked it up within 2 days and never did anything in the house ever again. Hell, he wouldn't even crap in the yard, he'd go way out in the woods where nobody would find/see it lol, it was awesome.

Anyways, I'd have to have basically the same schedule you just described. I could bring him to work a few days a work, but not everyday... his energy might get interesting though and limit that a little further

[Edited on November 15, 2007 at 3:32 PM. Reason : asdf]

11/15/2007 3:28:21 PM

Quote :

"just put his face in the pee a few times"

yeah that's what we do too. worked pretty quick for us too, but just every now and then she spazzes out. she doesn't ever pee inside anymore, it's always poop. -shrug- i'm sure she'll get over it

11/15/2007 3:33:08 PM

Agent 0's story is one of about a thousand that I could tell about all the crazy shit that my boxer has gotten into.

Another time we had grilled some burgers and I left the foam packaging on the counter. We went out somewhere and came back like an hour later to an apartment that smelled like bourbon and a very guilty looking boxer. I like bourbon, but I don't like my dog drinking it.

Turns out that a carafe of bourbon that I had on the counter was partially sitting on the foam meat packaging and when Kosmo yanked off the counter, he took the bourbon with it. This prompted the purchase of a shop vac.

---

Anyways, despite a lot of hassle that comes along with a boxer, I wouldn't trade him for another breed of dog. When they're really young, they are especially a handful and need to get a lot of energy out. I wouldn't recommend an apartment or small living space for a young boxer. Once they get older (Kosmo is 5.5 now) they tend to sleep for 16 hours a day and morph into a pillow that you have to feed.

He never really took to the crate but he was housebroken fairly quickly. The real problem in leaving him alone became separation anxiety. That took years to fix, but now we just leave him at home while we're at work and he just passes out on the couch for 8-10 hours a day. We also have a brittany, and actually prefers her crate. All of the crate training guides/materials claim this about crate training but after trying and failing to crate train our boxer, we decided that these people were out of their minds. But we gave it another shot with the brittany, and we had her crate trained in a few days. I guess some dogs are just philosophically opposed to it.

A good resource for boxer stuff is http://www.boxerworld.com

and feel free to pm me with any other questions.

11/15/2007 3:35:26 PM

Thanks, I've read a lot on that site already in the last few days... very informative, although they do need to fix a few spelling/grammar errors

/grammar nazi

I'm sure I'll have some more questions shortly

11/15/2007 3:49:17 PM

Oh, is there anyway existing members can get new members registered on their forum? It says registration is closed.. didn't know if maybe you could invite ppl or something.

11/15/2007 3:50:36 PM

its in hickory, but i donate a lot to Blue Ridge Boxer Rescue.

11/15/2007 4:07:39 PM

^^^^ we tried the crate with ours too and she would go in and everything, but didn't like it... ended up just leaving her out for a couple hours at a time and she did great, so now she's just out all the time (10 hours or so most days during the week) with no problems... luckily for us, she never really had the separation anxiety though, she can tell when we're leaving and she'll just go get on the couch...

ours definitely still has a lot of energy when we get home (she just turned 3) and it doesn't look to be slowing down any

^^that site has been that way for quite a while, i've never been able to join

[Edited on November 15, 2007 at 4:12 PM. Reason : ^]

[Edited on November 15, 2007 at 4:13 PM. Reason : .]

11/15/2007 4:11:58 PM

That's probably who I am going to adopt one from. I wish I had a way of knowing when they'd get a young one in, I just don't want to get one that's already big/older... I really want a puppy that'll grow up to me.

11/15/2007 4:13:17 PM

the boxer rescue in wilmington has a few under 1 year.

11/15/2007 4:19:45 PM

I wish I could have a dog. My GF doesn't like them. WTF? How can you not like dogs?

11/15/2007 11:48:31 PM

get a new girlfriend.

11/16/2007 1:10:24 AM

^^ How can you not like dogs? Your GF == FAIL.

11/16/2007 2:49:11 AM

get a new girlfriend.

11/16/2007 7:39:36 AM

Thread needs pictures:




and in the spirit of the holiday season

11/16/2007 8:03:13 AM

I have had a boxer for over 9 years and she is still as full of energy as the day we brought her home. We had a problem with separation anxiety when she was younger, but that has gone away with age. We got another boxer mix (80% boxer 20% bulldog) who is 6 years old who is more of a lazy slug.

They are both amazing animals and great pets, I have had other breeds but I'll tell ya boxers have my heart. My girl is an AKC purebred and was purchased from a very reputable breeder in the Raleigh area. My wife's dog is a mutt (for the most part) that we found in Wayne County on the internet. She has had some health problems (as all boxers will) and we have done quite a lot to keep her quality of life up.

I can agree that they are stubborn, hardheaded animals, but they are amazingly loyal companions and bring a smile into my day. They are smarter than they get credit for, and usually have a very incorrect reputation to overcome. People call my girls pitbulls and stuff all the time and think that boxers are mean, viscous dogs just from their appearance which isn't farther from the truth.

I have the same fear of rescue animals, and honestly while my heart says it's the right thing to do, my brain and logic says that it is not just due to the uncertainty. It's a risk either way but I think the risk is higher for rescue animals. Those are just my thoughts.

If you go with a breeder make sure they are reputable and not a puppy mill. Check with the AKC (which is headquartered in Raleigh) before you buy. Good luck and let's see some pics when you get it!

11/16/2007 10:29:28 AM

^yeah, i'll walk ours and i get "is that a pit?" all the time... "ummm - no, it's a boxer" (cause i gots to educate)

couple of pics in my gallery (Tyson is a friend's, and Salem is our girl)

11/16/2007 10:54:26 AM

they have one of the worst high pitch piercing yelps as a puppy... it is worse than nails on a chalkboard... but they are really cute

11/16/2007 11:19:45 AM

I got my boxer(pit bull mix) from a free classified ad in the paper. We showed up and she was covered in fleas and had been outside since birth. I brought her home and cleaned her up, took care of the flea/tick problem and had her checked at the vet... healthy little girl. She was great as a puppy, honestly since I have had her, got her at 11 weeks she has only peed in the house 4 or 5 times. never dropped a duece on the carpet. Crate trained for the first 1.5 years, now she has had whole house access for the past year. Yes every once in awhile she will get into something, but shes a puppy, that happens!

I will say it is all about discipline from the very begining. My mom got a full blooded boxer and she left that dog do whatever it want. Biggest pain in the ass. Doesnt listen, jumps on everything/body. She is crate trained though and house broken.

Boxers are great dogs as long as you have time to train them and give them plenty of excercise. Also, make sure their tail is docked!! that thing is a weapon!




Boxer/pitt mix on left ; Full boxer on the right.

11/16/2007 11:36:55 AM

well if everyone else is doing it...

11/16/2007 11:43:08 AM

The one on the right looks exactly like my old dog (^^).. makes me kinda sad

I'm emailing my application to blueridge boxer rescue later today. On their website they have a few puppies that are young enough that I could still train/raise them and it'd essentially be comparable to buying one straight from a breeder... I agree that these dogs have to be disciplined from a very young age or they will never listen and will be an uncontrollable hellion.

The last one I had had terrible separation anxiety if we left him with anybody else overnight when we went out of town... as in, tore the curtains off the windows, tore up all the couches and destroyed a wooden TV stand when we left him with my aunt one day (she had to go to work and left him because we told her it'd be fine since we did it all the time..oops)

Anyways, will post pictures and more as I get more figured out and my application in. He'll have my gf's dog to play with which has more energy than either of us can manage to get rid of so that should work out good for them both... I just hope he doesn't destroy her house too bad



[Edited on November 16, 2007 at 11:45 AM. Reason : a]

11/16/2007 11:45:16 AM

great looking dogs... that boxer/pit is cool as hell looking

yeah get the tails docked and keep the ears natural, glad to see that happening here!!

11/16/2007 11:47:23 AM

Oh, meant to say earlier that my last one has his tail docked but it seemed to be longer than it should... damn thing was still almost a weapon. He'd shake his whole ass and tail together and knock the hell out of tables with it lol... mine will most def not have anything done to its ears. my ex-gf worked at a vet and after hearing how much that shit hurts i wouldnt want to do it to them, and honestly i like how they look naturally

11/16/2007 11:50:27 AM

yeah unfortunately my box/pitt mix didnt get her tail docked and I have had bruises from it on my legs. Boxers shake their whole body, not just wag their tails and DAMN IT HURTS! Actually looked into getting it cut now, but it is a 6 month healing process and I dont want to put her though that. Have also heard of boxers with tails splitting their tails open by hitting walls and stuff with them

11/16/2007 11:55:52 AM

damn lol, never heard of that... I've never seen one without a docked tail I don't think

11/16/2007 11:59:45 AM

mine isn't. when we got her she was 8 months already.

[Edited on November 16, 2007 at 1:15 PM. Reason : and that tail is long and strong as all get out]

11/16/2007 1:15:14 PM

I can imagine...

the tilting their head sideways look is hilariously cute

11/16/2007 1:20:31 PM