Blitz in his favorite chair by the window.
Good memories of one special Boxer, Schnitzel, stay with me. My parents brought her home from a kennel up near Seneca Lake when I was about eight or nine. She was great company on walks and out in the country. Typical Boxer: happy, playful, loyal, loving. And she did NOT like porcupines. You’d think, after coming back home with a mouthful of quills, she’d know not to fool with porcupines; nope, she must have been looking for revenge, and repeated the same mistake. That was the last time we let her run in the woods by herself.
Fast forward a couple decades. I decided to get my own Boxer and do dog shows. Happy Boy was my show dog, and he won a number of ribbons while he was still a puppy. But when he reached his first birthday, he had to compete against champions, and he didn’t do so well. He was a great dog, and with his laid-back disposition, he was good company.
Fast forward more decades. Being in the computer industry, I have some skills in PHP and MySQL database programming, so I decided to help the AABR in their efforts to rescue Boxers. My contribution was to write the back-end web programming to process the many adoption applications that are submitted daily. Now when a hopeful adopting family submits an application, an AABR volunteer can view the questionnaire and track its approval process through to a successful adoption. My help to the Boxers.
Around that same time, I knew it was time for another Boxer, and Leah came to the Wilcox household. She had spent her first five years in a dog crate at some puppy mill in southeastern Pennsylvania. It took me over a year to get her to the point of acting like a Boxer, and I have nothing good to say about puppy mills. Never buy a dog from a store; buy from a reputable kennel. Leah’s life story is on the AABR website.
Because Leah was having difficulties learning how to act like a dog, after some months I also adopted Blitz. He was an excellent dog, and he set a proper example for Leah to follow.
Blitz missed Leah after her sad departure (read about that in her life story), and it was time to adopt Daisy. After some initial “adjustments” by alpha-dog Blitz, Daisy settled into her role of Second Boxer. They both enjoyed walks, and quickly learned to walk beside each other on my left side without pulling.
Their home split up after awhile, and they both needed to resettle elsewhere. It worked out well for them, thanks to the efforts of the AABR once again.
What’s the take-away here? If you’re a Boxer or dog fan, support the AABR anyway you can. They do a wonderful job helping the unfortunate Boxers in our society find good forever homes.
Daisy on the left with Blitz.
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Alan… Thanks for all your help with the Adoptaboxerrescue.com website. Been using it since 2008!