by Tim Hutchings, Winuwuk Boxers, UK

I have certainly had an interesting few months since I submitted my Millennium Musings to the last edition of the Boxer Underground. I had a thoroughly enjoyable few days in the States during January when it was a real pleasure to judge the 90-plus entries at the Northeast Florida Boxer Club. Then it was off for a ‘proper’ holiday in Kenya for a couple of weeks before heading North to the beautiful city of Stockholm at the end of February where I had been asked to judge the Swedish Boxer Club's Championship Show. This show had attracted a massive entry of more than 170 from all over Scandinavia, and while I had the task of sorting out the bitch puppies, the adult males and Best in Show, my co-judge, Julie Brown, was given the dog puppies and the bitches.

In the middle of all this, I did manage to get back home for several weeks and when catching up with the huge volume of electronic mail which we all seem to get these days, I was somewhat surprised by the level of interest that my last article had generated. I also think that some of the comments did rather miss the point, so before I start on any other topic, I will just clarify the point I was making.

Put bluntly, I was simply expressing my personal belief that many modern Boxer enthusiasts have become very blinkered, with the unwavering belief that the Boxers on their own doorstep and within their own country are infinitely superior to anything else on offer. I further believe that this siege mentality is doing nothing to help us drive the Boxer breed to a higher level of quality, because as individual countries increasingly do their own thing, the variations in National type become even more extreme and dominant National faults become almost impossible to breed out.

In the UK, we used to see a number of new imports arriving each year from a variety of backgrounds, but this has now slowed to an absolute trickle and (depressingly) enthusiasts who have never travelled outside of their own country can be heard pigeon-holing the Boxers from any other country.

‘Everyone’ knows that ‘every’ American Boxer has flat feet, a head like a Great Dane, a ski-slope nose, upright shoulders, no bone, a terrier topline and, on top of everything else, it is probably big enough to saddle up for a quick ride into the sunset.

Equally, ‘everyone’ knows that ‘all’ Boxers from Germany have heads like footballs, show their teeth, have bulldog fronts, silly little quarters and are so unbalanced that if you put a sixpence on their nose they would do a somersault. Indeed, only the other day I received an e-mail from the States informing me that all the Boxers in Europe had heavy heads. These sweeping comparisons are as dangerous as they are ludicrous.

This situation has now become so serious that it is almost embarrassing to line up a series of comparative photographs showing the equivalent of the National Specialty winner in the United States, the UK, Germany etc., since they are beginning to look like different breeds. And yet, the Standards are essentially the same, demanding the same type of dog.

I believe that what is now missing is the interest, amongst enthusiasts, in the Boxer internationally. Everyone is so wound up about being Number One in their own little part of the Boxer World that they can lose sight of what each and every country has to offer.

Against this background, I did find my trip to Sweden particularly refreshing since in that country, they are always looking beyond their own borders and as a result they have access to a huge variety of different bloodlines from America to France, and from the UK to Germany and Italy. Consequently, they have access to the full range of virtues (and faults) in their breeding programme and the results are beginning to show with a depth of quality that was so much higher than at the time of my last visit in 1992. Perhaps we can all learn something from the Scandinavian's approach to their breeding programs.

Continuing this theme for just a moment longer, I will just reflect on something that Richard Beauchamp wrote recently in the Boxer Quarterly. He said: "When I speak of consistent judging, I speak of an individual who has, over the years, developed a clear cut interpretation - a mental picture, if you will - of the Standard. This template is forged through years of study and HAVING SEEN MANY DOGS OF GREAT TYPE ALONG THE WAY."

I could not agree with this more and if I may, I will just run a little test with 20 comparatively recent Boxers from around the world:

I honestly believe that the vast majority of these names should be familiar to anyone throughout the world who claims to have a genuine and abiding interest in our breed. More importantly, I believe that on hearing any of these names, the true breed enthusiast should instantly have a very strong mental picture of the dog in question - a mental picture dominated by excellent breed type since all of the dogs named above are 120% Boxer! You may not have loved each and every one of them. They may not all have been quite your cup of tea. But I can guarantee that seeing any one of them in the ring would have added to your understanding of true breed type.

There are outstanding Boxers in all four corners of the globe and the more we acknowledge this, the greater chance we all have of rediscovering the ‘middle ground’ where true Boxer type probably lies.

Foreign judges may also have a role to play in this process, but their role is limited if they just travel the world trying to hunt down the exhibits which look most like the dogs they have at home - for at home, dogs with short upper arms and over-angulated quarters may predominate and we would not want judges promoting this failing! Instead, one would hope that somewhere on his travels the judge would have seen and really appreciated a good forehand assembly and understood its importance to breed type and that he would then reward it accordingly.

This now brings me neatly on to the subject that I briefly wanted to talk about in this edition - forehand construction.

I think we could all agree that this is an area where many modern Boxers fail. Recently, we were trying to select a UK stud dog who was particularly strong in this department and, from the entire population, we came up with just six possibilities. Of these, we dismissed three because their forehand virtues just could not outweigh their other failings; we then dismissed another two on grounds of pedigree and we then used the sixth who did not produce the desired forehand in his progeny. So it was back to square one!

Good forehands are very difficult to breed and when you do get one, they seldom seem to breed true. I have always thought that this may simply be on account of the fact that the bones of the forehand are not mechanically attached to the rest of the skeleton, but that may be too simplistic an explanation.

I have also become increasingly aware that it always seem to be a choice between a good forehand in profile and a good front. The two seem to be mutually exclusive. I can name quite a number of Boxers who have exceptional forehand angulation in profile with a long, well sloped shoulder meeting a long upper arm at an angle of roughly 90 degrees. This all then links together to give a dog who appears to stand over himself, with evident forechest and a lovely reachy action in profile. But move this dog out and back and the illusion of perfection usually falls apart with a wide front action, elbows flapping and legs weaving.

You then have the other side of the coin - the dog with a beautiful ‘gun barrel’ front from head on, who moves out and back so accurately you could shed tears of joy, but look at him in profile and he has very little forechest and poor front angulation. Then move him around the ring and he takes short little choppy strides, using an enormous amount of energy to do just one circuit.

I would be very interested to hear anyone else's views on why it is so difficult to get the two virtues together. The only explanation I can come up with is that as the forehand angulation increases the shoulder blade and upper arm are, of necessity, extending further down the ribcage and with the oval shape of the Boxer ribs in profile this naturally pushes the legs away from the body.

This seems logical, but a few outstanding dogs do prove that it is possible to get both virtues in one package and here I would use Ch. Ashgate Able Seaman of Seefeld as an example (I feel that I can name him as he is, sadly, no longer with us). To my mind, Able Seaman really did have a perfect forehand assembly. If only there were more around who did.

At the moment it is the type who are straighter in shoulder that seem to predominate, probably because judges find it easier to spot inaccurate movement out and back - which they always seem to penalize disproportionately to restricted movement in profile. Judges also seem to like rewarding the straighter shouldered dog since the animal will usually look highly dramatic and high-stationed in profile. Dramatic, but not correct.

Let’s just hope that this unhealthy state of affairs is a temporary blip and that we are not being taken down a route where good forehands may be disappearing for good, since when you rarely come across one, a beautiful Boxer forehand is a wonderful sight to behold!

Anyway, I've rambled on for quite long enough. As always, your comments and criticisms will be welcomed.

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