THE WHITE MARKING PATTERNS OF BOXERS.

Click here for a short version.

Click on the photo below to see illustrations of the different marking patterns.

This article and the lectureseries is copyright Cecilie Strømstad and Henning Lund. This page was created in 1999, and is constantly updated. Be sure to get our permission before you link to this page or reprint any of it's contents in any context.

To see a healthsurvey comparing white and colored boxers, click here.

At the bottom of this page is the beginning of a "lecture" which will take you throught the genetics. At the bottom of this page you will find links to take you to other pages dedicated to white boxers.

Dog breeding is an interesting hobby, and as you learn more about it, you understand how little you really know.......

When i started breeding boxers on my own (my parents had a few litters) there was one aspect of the breed i had real trouble understanding - and that was the legend that white boxers were weak and prone to all sorts of inherited diseases. The reason this was a mystery to me was that I had heard through the years about all these big fat white puppies, very vital as newborns, and often the only ones surviving a difficult birth where all the colored puppies had died. What was it that made these boxers that were obviously so strong and vital as newborns, so sickly and weak as adults??????

My never ending curiosity made me decide to investigate this mystery. First I read all I could find on the inheritance of coat color in dogs in general, and then on the boxer breed itself. What I found was that the white boxers have a color that is a very common color in dogs, and is a desired color in many breeds, and in some even the ONLY desired color. I also found that in other breeds there were no anectdotes on weak, sick white dogs....

The next task was to investigate an hopefully find out why the boxer was so differnet from all these other breeds. I did an extensive litterature-search from the library at the Veterinary College in Oslo - and found nothing. I searched through about 20 boxerbooks to look for references to surveys or scientific research on health in white boxers - and found nothing. I talked to veterinarians and breeders to see if they had any useful information - and got the odd story of a white boxer with a condition it shared with a lot of other boxers. The conclusion had to be that there was nothing indicating that white boxers were in any way different from other boxers, or from other dogs with the same white color.

In the end I decided I had to research this myself, and with good assistance from "Groruddalen Dyreklinikk" and the Veterinary College, and with financial support from "Dyrene og Vi" I did a survey of my own. I wanted to find out whether "White boxers are normal boxers". I developed a questionary covering everything about the dog and its life, all from size, temperament, defects, illnesses, vaccinations and age of death, and the owners opinion of his/her dog. I found 25 white boxers of different ages, and selected a control group of colored boxer from the same age groups with the aid of random numbers. The survey can only be regarded as a pilot survey, but the conclusion was unanimos; Yes, white boxers are normal boxers. They had a less frequency of all diseases, and they lived longer than the control group. The difference was statistically significant only for furunculosis - which the whites had significantly less of! A difference in life span from 9,3 for the whites and 5,8 for the colored. (I also made an estimate of life expectancy with the condition that all dogs that were still alive lived to the age of 7 - the whites would still have a much longer life expectancy). The surevey resulted in an article published in "Norsk Veterinærtidsskrift" no.11 1990. the article was very well received among the veterinarians.

The things you find on the following pages, are the things we have learned by reading books on dog genetics as well as boxer books. We have also collected data from breeders on the number of puppies born from different combinations of parents. these numbers you will find here, and they will show that the things you read on the following pages actually work this way in real life. All books we have read on color genetics in dogs have based their numbers for boxers on the boxers that have been registered, and they have covered many breeds, the tradition for many years has been to cull the white puppies, and not register them. Our numbers come directly from the breeders, and include all puppies that have been born, also the white and the stillborn. To make the numbers more universal, we have collected data from several countries and continents.

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