How to Keep Your Boxer Healthy

 

 Feed him a balanced diet.  Additional tips from owners include:

Give an occasional yogurt treat

Ask your vet about giving Boxers calcium tablets as they could have some problems later on in life!

Keep him comfortable so his immune system can remain strong.

Boxers are shorthaired and sensitive to extreme elements of the weather and thus must be kept a housedog. His shortened muzzle also makes hot and humid weather uncomfortable for him.

Give Boxers lots of exercise and regularly.

Remember that he is a big and strong breed and requires physical outlets for his boundless energy and high play/prey drive.

Walk them three times a day or have play sessions. Provide plenty of space for them to bounce around. You want to keep their spirit up and not break it or they wont be the dogs you fall in love with in the first place. Healthy and happy Boxers are a joy to live with.

Make a breeder your friend.

Keep in touch with the breeder who sold you the Boxer. The breeder can advise you about care and health matters that are unique to the breed. Any Boxer breeder, for that matter, can be an invaluable ally to you throughout your Boxer's life.

Guard your Boxer from fleas.

Your Boxer has fleas if you find black specks in the fur or fleabite marks on the skin. A tip given by an owner is to give your Boxer garlic daily to prevent fleas.

Boxers catch fleas from other animals. It is an every day problem that, at some time or another, you can expect to encounter in your Boxer.

The fleas only go to the Boxer to feed on its blood.

Fleas mostly live and multiply in your home. The comfortable living - central heating, double-glazing and, best of all, the fitted carpet we create for ourselves and our Boxers also work best for the fleas.

De-worm your puppy every month and your adult Boxer, every six months.

Worms

Worms is another everyday problem in Boxers but the puppy is more likely to get sick from worms than the grown up Boxer.

The sick one would lose weight and become weak, suffer from upset stomach, poor growth, listlessness or even lung trouble.

They may impede your puppys growth and cause him to have a potbelly or be thin and have a shoddy-looking coat.

Your grown Boxer may not be showing any sign of worms but he could spread them more than the sick puppy, through large amount of larvae or eggs passed out in the feces.

If your Boxer has tapeworms, he has fleas too because part of the tapeworm life cycle occurs in flea as the host. As such, treatments against flea and tapeworm are normally prescribed together.

Some, like the roundworm, that infect dogs can also get passed on to children.

In more serious cases, your dog will catch cough, pneumonia and develop lung problems.

There are different types of worms that infect dogs such as tapeworm, roundworm, ringworm and heartworm. De-worm your Boxer puppy every month and your grown Boxer, every 6 months.

Puppies get sick from worms, more so than dogs.

But your infected grown Boxers help spread the worms more through their droppings that would contain large number of larvae and/or eggs.

Released into the surrounding, these larvae and eggs could infect other animals and even children.

The tapeworms have a flat, segmented body.

You see them as single segments or chains that resemble segments of rice in the droppings of infected canine.

Part of the tapeworms life cycle occurs in the flea as the host. Therefore, if your Boxer has tapeworms, it has fleas too and the treatments for both are usually prescribed together by the vet.

The roundworms (toxocara) live and produce hundreds of eggs in the intestine.

They cause digestive upset in puppies, poor growth, and thin or out-of-conditioned coat.

The infected puppies may become listless, have a potbelly or tucked in appearance.

Once the roundworms migrated from the gut to the lungs, your Boxer can suffer lung damage, cough and pneumonia.

The roundworm eggs in the dog droppings get passed out and about.

These are very hardy eggs, resistant to heat and cold, and can survive up to 7 years in the soil. The eggs can pass on to children through ingestion and cause them to fall sick as well.

As precautions, you can toilet train your Boxer puppy to use a place where you can easily clean up and dispose of the droppings into the sewer. Have your children wash their hands every time after they handle the puppies and discourage your puppies from licking people hands or faces.

Taking Care of Your Sick Boxer

Boxers, unfortunately, are prone to several potential health problems like:

  • Skin allergy
  • Cancer
  • Hip dysphasia
  • Bloat
  • Heart ailments
  • Hypothroidism
  • Fleas
  • Worms 
Knowing what they are will help you to better monitor your pets health and to gather the pertinent information, in case of an illness, that would assist your veterinarian to administer the correct diagnosis and treatment. Below are some common afflictions of Boxers.                 

Alapechia (Lost of hair on the trunk)

Seems to be more common in male Boxers.

One, which died at the age of 12 years and 4 months, was diagnosed with seasonal alopecia. He used to go bald once a year but the hair always grew back on, said its owner.

Bloat

Gastric torsion or GDV or bloat in your Boxer can be life threatening so bring him to the veterinarian immediately.

The stomach gets filled with air and twisting and this can happen suddenly. The symptoms include restlessness, drooling and nausea and the stomach is bloated (distended abdomen). Your Boxer may vomit and continue to retch but nothing would come out.

Cancerous and benign tumors

Boxers are highly prone to cancer.

So any time you see a bump on your Boxer, you should check it out. About 20 out of 100 cases are cancerous.

Watch out for both external and internal lumps, eye ulcers or cherry eye as they called it, as well as dermodicosis or skin sores. 

Mast cell tumors are malignant and they do not occur very often but can form either in the skin or within the body.

The related disorders reported along such tumors are round raised masses in the skin of your Boxer, lack of appetite, vomiting and abdominal pain. Check for tarry stools due to bleeding in the upper intestinal tract.

Boxers of any age can develop mast cell tumor but older ones, above 8 years, are more prone to it. 

Never take tumors in your Boxers lightly, even a small one! The veterinarian would usually have them removed immediately because of their high susceptibility to cancer. 

One owner noticed her Boxer had a bump the size of a mosquito bite that did not go away even after 10 days. The vet diagnosed it a malignant tumor and removed it the very next day. The owner felt so relieved that the tumor was removed before the cancer had a chance to spread. 

Another owner found both his Boxer girls had lumps and had it checked out immediately. The vet removed the lumps due to their breed and the Boxers were all fine now! 

Yet another owner was not so lucky.

I have had the pleasure of raising two great Boxers but both passed away much too young of cancer. The last one, Nick, died one week after being diagnosed with anal cancer. It spread rapidly and he was only 7 years old!

Cryptorchidism is peculiar to male dogs and a condition present at birth.

The testicle/s, which developed in the abdomen, fail to descend into the scrotum. The usually underdeveloped and non-functional testicle/s should be removed, as it could turn cancerous later in life.

If the condition remains after the puppy is more than 2 months old, then the chances are it will remain so permanently.

Eye ulcers, if caught early, are easy to treat. Late treatment can be expensive for you as well as painful for your Boxer.

Dermodicosis or non-contagious mange first appears as numerous patches anywhere on the Boxers skin. The hair will fall off, leaving bald patches in large areas, and the bald skin starts to break down, turning into crusty sores.

Atopy is itchy (pruritic) skin disease caused by allergy to something the Boxer breathes in or touch.

It cannot be cured and is the number two common allergic skin condition in dogs, after flea allergy dermatitis. Having fleas would make it worse for your Boxer.

A Boxer suffering from atopy would have itchiness particularly on the hands and feet.

Hed be chewing his paws, scratching his ears, shaking its head, scratching the muzzle or rubbing it on the ground. These same symptoms can also be brought about by food allergy.

Acne in young dogs shows as red bumps (papules) and blackheads (comedones) on the chin and lips.

Shorthaired dogs like Boxers are more likely to get them. And like in human, they start getting acne around puberty, but the problem would usually go away after one year old or so.

However, you may have to help with some topical gel medication similar to the one used by teenagers. Such lesions may become infected and develop pus, which becomes itchy for your Boxer and he starts rubbing his face in the carpet or against furniture.

Urinary incontinence in dogs can be due to a neurological lesion something not normal with the parts of the nervous system that deal with urine regulation.

A Boxer with incontinence will dribble urine and if a neurologic lesion is the cause, then this has to be removed.

There are also other reasons not related to the nervous system like congenital defect and bacterial urinary tract infection, also known as bacterial cystitis or bladder stone.

If your Boxer leaves wet spots where he has slept and he has skin irritation from contact with the urine, then he may have incontinence.

However, wet spots around the house alone may simply mean that he drinks a lot more and needs to relieve himself often but you are not allowing him outside frequently enough. Straining while urinating and blood in the urine are two signs of bladder stone.