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| Chuisle Canelli |
In 2005, I worked as a library director by day and renovated a haunted Victorian home by night and on the weekends. I was single, lived alone and craved a companion – the four-legged kind. On Labor Day weekend, eleven years ago, an adorable 3-1/2 month old Boxer came to live with me.
I
was a bit naïve about the Boxer breed, I admit. I didn’t realize that this cute
puppy with her uplifted nose and chronic under bite possessed an inbred desire
to protect me above all else. Boxers are considered a personal-protection breed
in the AKC working dog category. And she took her work very seriously. Any two
or four-legged creature coming within sight of our car or our home was simply
there to kill us. Or so she instinctively believed.
This became a problem, of course,
when I brought anyone to my home or wanted to give them a ride in my car (if
she was sharing it with us.) I worked continually on teaching her that my
friends were her friends. But, she would have none of it and rarely understood.
However,
when I met my husband Gerry and his grandson Colin, she amazingly and
immediately figured out that they were to be tolerated. In fact, she came to
love and protect them as much as she adored me - with her complete heart and
soul. She never once barked at them or approached them with aggression. As a
matter of fact, Colin at 8 years old could be extremely annoying but she simply
looked the other way. His friends, however, were another matter entirely. She
terrorized each and every one of them. One friend even crossed the street when
he was passing our house. He didn’t trust the closed door or the expanse of
lawn. Only the street-width gave him any confidence he would have a running
start.
The Boxer was bred in Europe from a
strain of dog originally used for fighting. It is a cousin to the Bulldog, is
extremely courageous, and has a built-in desire to please and protect his or
her owner(s). He or she is solid and muscular with a very short coat that can
be velvety soft on the underbelly and face. Traditionally, a Boxer’s ears are
cropped and its tail is bobbed. Today many countries actually prohibit the
practice; the purpose for cropping and bobbing was to give the Boxer an
inapproachable demeanor. No friendly feeling could be given away - the ears stood
stern and the shortened tail could be seen wagging only from behind. Germans
perfected the Boxer’s temperament for personal protection and immense love of
its master(s). When trained for protection, no one will get between a Boxer and
his charge.
The American Kennel Club describes
the Boxer as “fun-loving, bright, active and loyal.” Certainly, many people who
have come to our front door would not have described our protective Boxer as
fun-loving. Her mission in life was to protect her loved ones and the postal
worker and UPS driver were suspect enemies.
Eventually, our Boxer came to understand who was okay and who wasn’t. We
fine-tuned the meet and greet process and trained her to be calm and reserved
before approaching new friends. Astoundingly, she was gentle and patient with
each and every young grandchild born to us in the past three years.
Our Boxer’s life was filled with
love and fun. When possible, she traveled with us and spent many hours in the
car on the way New Jersey, New Hampshire or Maine. We rented houses on the Cape
or the coast of Maine that allowed for her presence. We had to spell the word
R-I-D-E when we discussed any potential that she would accompany one of us to
the dump or the store. Her excitement, her high-arching jump, and her absolute
joy were worth the inconvenience of short needle-like hair on the seats and in
every nook and cranny of the car.
Due
to a bout of Boxer Colitis as a young pup, she enjoyed a homemade diet, rich in
sweet potatoes and meat broth all of her life. She was as active as a Boxer can
be, racing around and across any large grassy expanse with wild abandon.
Couches were her favorite sleeping spot and she never understood why some
furniture was off-limits.
She
snuck off into the tick-laden woods behind our Marion home as often as she
could, although she was never out of our sight and she was admonished severely
for leaving it. Once I mistook a deer for her. As it munched on some plants on
the dip of land outside my kitchen window, it resembled our graceful
fawn-colored Boxer with splashes of the whitest white on her neck and head.
While
some do live longer, Boxers generally live only 8-10 years. They are
susceptible to bloat (a fatal twisting of their elongated stomach) and to
cancers of all types. They are playful, loving, loyal and comical as elderly
dogs in their final years, however. We know this to be true.
Our
beloved Boxer passed away the week after Labor Day, eleven years after she
first came home with me. She had spent her first years riding shotgun in my VW
Cabrio convertible (always belted in) everywhere I went. Her floppy ears flew
in the breeze and people in passing cars could not help but smile. She often
slept in my bed (soon enough sharing it with my new husband, Gerry) on cold
winter nights. She crept on her belly to the very bottom underneath piles of
blankets and stayed until she was too hot to breathe. She sat still and erect,
waiting for cheese sticks for lunch where Gerry visited her at lunch every
weekday in our Norwood home. She took one last long ride to visit our grandson,
Colin who had left for college just the week before.
And
she passed away on her own terms with me beside her. She was a woman’s best
friend.
Read
about the Boxer in one of the many books in the Minuteman Library Network such
as The Boxer Handbook by Joan Hustace Walker.
Or share the joys of this breed with a young child by reading Boxers Are
the Best by Elaine Landau.
