Next on our list of dogs the Bossyboots of Britain are saying ought to go extinct are the long-loved Boxer breed. Let's admit, up front, that I personally would not want a Boxer. But some people do.
What's wrong with Boxers? Well, for one thing, they're large--one of the smaller breeds in the German Mastiff group, but still, show-quality Boxers weigh at least 55 pounds, often 75 pounds. Much of this size is muscle. Boxers are ripped. People who like these dogs admire their musculature. They like having a big tough macho-looking dog, and say the breed's flattish, wrinkle-jowled face is cute rather than ugly. But Boxers can be hard to manage if not well trained. Bred to hunt down bulls, boars, and bears, they can kill livestock or humans if they feel like it.
For large dogs they have a reasonably long life expectancy, 10-12 years on average. Large dogs are generally not efficient biological machines but Boxers can live as long as cats. However, the last years of a Boxer can be hard to watch. The flattened faces don't make it easy for the dogs to breathe. Add smog and chemical sprays and local warming to the mix and you get a dog who coughs and wheezes like an asthmatic human. Impaired ability to breathe can lead to heart disorders and arguably makes Boxers extra-vulnerable to cancer; they are the dog breed most likely to die from cancer. They are also prone to neurological diseases that feature paralysis and seizures.
Unrelated to their faces, but related to their size, is the incidence of death from vehicle-related "trauma" in Boxers. Because they are big, strong, heavy, and also prone to bounce about in what their humans normally consider an adorable way, these dogs seem to be in danger any time they are near a motor vehicle. They chase cars and sometimes catch one. They bounce around the inside of a car during a crash, out of control, if they're not in the kind of secure crates that don't fit inside most cars; the dogs can be killed by being thrown around during a car crash, and are also heavy enough to endanger their humans. If you have a Boxer you should probably have a pickup truck in which its travel crate can be secured.
You may also need liability insurance. Boxers can be aggressive with other people's beloved pets, few of whom win in a confrontation. Even when their jumping up to put their paws on people's shoulders and drool on their faces is clearly meant to be friendly play, they can injure people.
Along with so many smaller, less problematic dogs who are loved for their high energy and eagerness to do jobs, Boxers need lots of exercise; a big yard with a big solid fence, of course, but also a good bit of exercise with their humans. They're often described as "hyperactive." They want something to do and, if not adequately entertained by humans, are likely to find something--"killing" their humans' shoes, or killing the neighbors' chickens. They drool copiously, too. Their short coats shed all year and the shed hairs stick to everything.
But if you have, not necessarily through any fault of your own, produced extrovert offspring who whir around the house making messes...Boxers don't mix well with children too young to outweigh the dogs, and they are still stronger than humans who weigh twice as much as the dogs do, but they can be soulmates to restless, annoying, extrovert teenagers. There is that. Also, if you are troubled with frequent visits from bears, buffalo, javelinas, etc., there's a lot to be said for a dog who will attack these animals for you.
Otherwise? Even a yappy Chihuahua can raise the alarm if your home is intruded. A medium-sized dog can injure or kill an intruder if he attacks anyone. To me, Boxers seem like more dog than I'd ever be likely to need.
But does that mean they should go extinct? I'm not sure about that. I think the idea that no Boxers should ever exist, given that their life expectancy is not in fact all that short for their size, is coming less from concern about the dogs' well-being than from a desire to make law-abiding people less able to defend themselves. Such a desire is well documented among the enemies of the US and UK, and they are a less desirable, less endearing, species than Boxers.
Boxers are a breed that is easy to find in shelters. If people give up Australian Shepherds, German Shepherds, Retrievers, and Collies because these good-sized, active dogs are too much for their lazy humans to keep up with, you know people are going to fail with Boxers. Perhaps the surprising thing is that so many of the Boxers have not done anything antisocial and can be offered for adoption.
Boxers are normally born with tails--long, strong tails loaded with dense bones and solid muscles, which whack when they wag their tails against their humans' legs. Traditionally the tails are at least shortened in the US, and completely cut off in other countries, so the dogs' handlers don't have to worry about being whacked with the dogs' tails. Healthy Boxers are cheerful creatures, wag their tails often, and can lose the hair and damage the skin on their tails by whacking the tails against things.
A cat breed that goes with Boxers might, therefore, be Manx. We've not featured adoptable Manx cats recently. These cats are afflicted with a dominant gene that causes them to be born with stumps of tails or no tails and extra-long hind legs. Other genes give Manx cats a broad, muscular build and a thick short coat, which are likely to make people refer to them as "big fat cats" when they're not fat, and a tendency to revert to their full ancesral size; most Manx cats' healthy weight is in the "normal" 10-15 pound range for house pets, but some grow to 30 pounds of solid bone and lean muscle.
The Manx gene is lethal. The viable cats are born with amusing spinal deformities. Many Manx kittens are not viable. Breeders say that kittens who get two "strong" copies of the lethal gene are not born at all but simply reabsorbed into the mothers' bodies, so the cat never looks pregnant, although she was. Be that as it may (I don't recommend allowing Manx cats to breed), many Manx kittens are born with just "strong" enough copies of the lethal gene to inherit "Manx Syndrome," in which vital organs fail to develop as kittens mature. They may die shortly after birth, or during the second week when their eyes open and they try to scamper about like viable kittens, or during the second month when they are weaned...like our wretched Zakitty, so named because his last days resembled those of a poster boy for malnutrition whose middle name was Zakaria. Zakitty seemed to be growing big and strong on his mother's milk. Then his mother naturally started to produce less milk as Zakitty started to need more food. Nature intended him to start eating solid food but poor Zakitty was unable to digest any solid food, and starved to death despite being offered both kibble and human-grade meat.
However, Manx cats who get only one copy of the lethal gene can be healthy cats and lead normal lives. Apart from looking amusing they are known for a tendency to be especially devoted pets, often friendly to everyone in a calm and gracious way even while they make it clear that one specific person is their human and nobody else can come close to that person in their estimation.
My resident cat Serena is, at most, one-eighth Manx. She has s normal British body shape, a "big fat cat" beside the American Shorthair and Siamese crossbreeds in the neighborhood, though she's never carried any surplus weight. Knowing that her grandmother had suffered through the loss of several kittens with short tails or none, I was planning to have Serena spayed when she surprised me by giving birth before it seemed possible that she could be pregnant. She had constructed a well insulated little den on the porch and, in a year when we weren't targets for drive-by glyphosate spraying, she gave birth to four attractive, healthy kittens, all with slim body shapes and long tails.
I've not done a conversation-with-an-animal post lately. I owe you readers one, just to tease the people who quibble about them. I write these things in a state of complete sobriety, with just a bit of Irish whimsy, based on what animals' behavior really does nonverbally tell me.
So, although in literal fact Serena is on the porch eating kibble, a Cat Interview with Serena:
Serena: "I'm sure you're sorry now that you sent two of those kittens away at such an unreasonably early age."
PK: "The person who adopted them was very old and had cancer. She did not have many days to wait to enjoy the company of kittens."
Serena: "That's as may be. I had many days remaining when I was entitled to enjoy the company of my kittens. And now Swimmer's dead and Silver's the only one of my beautiful babies who's still here."
PK: "I'm told Stache is still living with the cancer patient's daughter."
Serena: "But they're a long way from here and we don't know them well."
PK: "Anyway, your kittens showed no indication that any of them had the Manx gene, and they were so extraordinarily well behaved..."
Serena: "Of course! They were my babies weren't they?"
PK: "They were. And they had been so gently and intelligently brought up that they lined up for medicine when they were sick, and lined up to go indoors to bed at sundown. Nobody had ever seen or heard of such a thing. So...you've not been spayed."
Serena: "And if people would stop spraying poison into the air I would have had many kittens by now. I've had several who showed no sign of any Manx genes, but showed the Seralini Effect, which is what you humans call the way I don't seem to react to the poison in the air the way you do, but then when my kittens come along they...well, for one thing, they get one whiff of what you call 'Roundup' and die."
PK: "Usually, but not always, one breath of that evil wind seemed to blow their lives out like little candles. And you've been lucky--being cats. A human who kills another human's pet cat can spend a year in prison. A human who kills a wild creature, even a doe out of deer hunting season, usually only has to pay a fine, which our Bad Neighbor could afford. Before your time, Serena, when the Bad Neighbor was in the process of making that nicer neighbor feel so troubled and want to stay in the city so much, we could hardly go up or down the road without finding a dead body in the road. The Bad Neighbor was a great shooter in those days, and killed all kinds of wild animals."
Serena: "Why don't you just kill him and be done with it?!"
PK: "Humans do better when we appeal to the law and get everyone to agree when a human has gone bad and needs killing. In times before we did that, people would take sides and kill each other until two whole families were gone. Now some people like to say that a human who has gone bad is sick and needs to be cared for. Others say that that's a weak-minded, foolish, wasteful way of thinking...but our Bad Neighbor deserves to suffer and, if he has to spend his last days being 'cared for' and 'helped' by a lot of White Men from Town, he will."
Serena: "What exactly do you mean by 'White Men from Town'?"
PK: "I mean what Stephen King meant by the characters he called that in some of his movies. A White Man from Town feels some attraction to a more natural way of life, may care about some people who live more naturally as friends, probably does mean well, and wants to live at least the way White people in the country live. But he just doesn't have what it takes. He might try farming, or hunting, or prospecting for a few weeks and then go back to town."
Serena: "Can humans be white? By 'a White man' do you mean somebody like the Elder Neighbors, who have white hair on their heads? How can humans be described by color words when you change your coat colors every day?"
PK: "It makes very little literal sense but some human families are called White, while others are Black or Red or Brown. The humans you know best are White. The humans in one of those houses where Silver spent a few cold nights, last year, with Wild Rose and Wild Thyme, are Black."
Serena: "It makes no literal sense at all. But if it helps to remove the Bad Neighbor from the neighborhood it's all good. I would like to have other kittens I could enjoy and be proud of, like Silver."
PK "You had Crayola and Pastel..."
Serena: "They had inferior qualities from their father's side, and didn't live long."
PK: "Pastel was poisoned."
Serena: "She was weak and succumbed easily."
PK: "She gave us Drudge, and also Dilbert, Dora, and Diego, while she was alive."
Serena: "Drudge is a fine fellow, isn't he? Of course, I was the one who reared him. I'm not proud of what I did, that year, after so many of our friends died...having kittens with a Manx tomcat. I've always avoided Manx tomcats--but I was lonely, and he was lonely, and we had no choice. So I had the two kittens who died right away, and poor little Zakitty who lived long enough to want to be your pet."
PK: "All cats who look Manx should be spayed or neutered as early as possible so that they don't have unfortunate babies like Zakitty."
Serena: "While you were looking up information about Boxer dogs I gav e birth to some more kittens. Did you notice?"
PK: "They came out so quietly I was surprised to see that they were breathing."
Serena: "Well, you've been very grumpy about playing games lately, and you'd been sick yesterday morning. I didn't want to make you feel worse. I told them to be quiet as they could be. Which, of course, they did, because I am SERENITY, the one and only cat like me there ever was, and my kittens do as I tell them."
PK: "You are indeed amazing. Given the amount of glyphosate and other vile stuff in the air over the weekend, I'm surprised the kittens came out able to draw breath, but if they can keep it up for a few weeks and bring some new life into the office I'll be pleased."
Now, on to the adoptable dogs and cats: no tails, but lots of love for the right person:
Zipcode 10101: Mia from NYC
Does she look puppyish to you? She's an adult dog, though. Thought to be a mix of Boxer, Black Mouth Cur, and other things, Mia weighs only 35 pounds and has a slightly more normal face shape, so she may be healthier for longer than some purebred Boxers. She has the high energy and goofy sense of humor/fun/play that are typical of Boxers, they say, but she's not aggressive; she does well with other dogs and cats.
Wallace from Tuscaloosa by way of Connecticut
Listed as an out-of-town pet on several Petfinder pages, Wallace is one of four homeless sibling kittens who can be adopted with or without his sister Rose. (The other two kittens can only be adopted together.) They are thought to have some Russian Blue ancestry as well as Manx. Some have complete but short tails, some have none: the typical Manx litter.
Zipcode 20202: Dolly from DC
Boxer and Mountain Cur, and perhaps other things, Dolly should look like a serious dog to evildoers, but they say she loves to play and snuggle with her own humans. Her healthy adult weight is about 45 pounds.
Rumpy from Silver Spring
They're sure that Stumpy and Longy, which are traditional Manx names for the three types of Manx kittens, are male. About Rumpy's gender there's still some confusion. If you don't already live with a kitten you need to take at least two of the three. Manx kittens are similar to other kittens: eat, bounce, snuggle, nap, repeat, and if one of them decides it's your kitten you'll know.
Zipcode 30303: Liko from Chattanooga by way of Atlanta
Her original humans tried to kill her. Her first adopters brought her back to the shelter. No real reason, either time. Liko is about two years old, in the 26 to 60 pounds range, nice with other animals but on the clingy side and happiest with a human of her very own. She completed basic training easily. Her foster family say she's a very good dog.
Red (and Khloe, Kix, and Max) from Buford
Take two, they're small. Just some more surplus kittens who were born because somebody was too lazy to have that operation done.
