How to Keep Your Boxer - or any Dog - 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 won't 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 puppy's 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 tapeworm's 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.
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