Editor’s note: The following is an article I wrote for a Boxer publication in another country. If you have any comments or prognostications of your own that you’d like to add to the next issue, just drop us a line. :-)

THE DOGS

The last year of the first millennium was a truly exciting one for the American Boxer. In 1999, the Boxer jumped to #10 in the American Kennel Club’s breed popularity list, with 34,998 registrations! In addition, four or five Boxers appeared among the Top Ten Working Dogs in the nation, according to the Dog News all-breed show wins statistics, with the Truesdales’ Ch. Hi-Tech’s Johnny J of Boxerton in the top spot as both the #1 Boxer and the #1 Working Dog. When you consider that in America, "show business" is BIG business, professional handlers rule the show ring, and in general, only people of considerable means can afford to campaign a Boxer to a high ranking in all-breed competition, that means that a great deal of money was being spent in the Boxer ring in 1999. Even so, I think that 1999's Top Ten Boxers were a really fine group of dogs and bitches that would do their share of winning almost anywhere in the world.

The big winners at the 1999 American Boxer Club National Specialty were also Boxers that could hold their own in any competition: The Best of Breed winner, Clark and Adams’ Ch. Vancroft’s Prime Time, who took the top honors at nearly eight years old, completely outshowed the competition, even at his "advanced" age. The Best of Opposite Sex, Ch. Holly Lane’s Creme De Menthe (also owned by Debbie Clark and Marcia Adams - a once in a lifetime "double header"!), was a perfect combination of substance and elegance, with a very correct head; the Futurity winner, Steve and Ann Anderson’s Rummer Run’s Major General, was also RWD; and the 1999 Top Twenty winner - Cheryl and Keith Robbins’ Ch. Storybook’s Rip It Up - received an Award of Excellence in the ABC Specialty.

THE ISSUES

We U.S. Boxer breeders face many of the same problems faced by our counterparts in other parts of the world, plus a few that are probably uniquely our own. Our main health concerns are hereditary heart disease and cancer (at least, those are the ones everyone talks about). Boxer Cardiomyopathy (BCM) appears to be more of a problem here than aortic stenosis, and is an especially troubling heart disease in that it often doesn’t become evident till the Boxer is "middle-aged," or older, and there is currently no way to "clear" dogs at an early age.

On the political scene, pet overpopulation is a tremendous problem in the U.S. (which makes those 34,998 Boxer registrations a somewhat frightening statistic!) , with hundreds of thousands (millions?) of dogs and cats being euthanized in animal shelters every year, at tax payers’ expense. This situation has completely overwhelmed breed rescue volunteers, has led to increasingly restrictive breeding legislation at the local level, and is allowing animal rights fanatics to become more and more influential. There was a huge and bitter controversy recently in the American Boxer Club when a large number of ABC members tried to amend the U.S. Boxer Standard to allow breeders the choice of showing their dogs cropped OR uncropped without penalty. Choice lost the vote, so we must continue to crop our show puppies if we want them to be competitive, but the issue may soon be out of our hands: At their national convention in July ‘99, the American Veterinary Medical Association voted to adopt a clearly anti-cropping and docking resolution and position statement. With fewer and fewer new vets willing to crop and risk the disapproval of their peers, I’m betting that U.S. exhibitors soon will have NO choice at all.

White and plain puppies are the same problem in the U.S. as they are everywhere else: Some breeders consider the whites "pariahs" and destroy them at birth, while others consider white to be just another color (albeit a disqualifying one), and would allow the whites AKC Limited (non-breeding) Registration, to enable breeders to gather more accurate statistics on the percentage of whites produced here. And almost everyone gives lip service to the great value of our plain Boxers, while almost no one keeps or shows them.

This first year of the second millennium promises to be equally exciting here, with the proposed move of the American Boxer Club National Specialty from its historical home in the Northeastern United States to a different site (not yet determined) in the center of the country, ongoing debates about white and plain boxers and natural versus cropped ears, and.a brand new debate about the AKC DNA Certification requirement for producing sires that will take effect on July 1, 2000. Boxer Cardiomyopathy will also hold center stage, as the American Boxer Club plays an increasingly leading role in attempting to eradicate the disease.

Let me close by inviting all our non-North American readers to continue to visit your American counterparts in The Boxer Underground for some truly international ringside gossip!