Boxer Rescue (UK)

About Us

Our life with Boxers

In 1972, Brian and I decided to get our first Boxer.  We saw an advert for puppies for sale, and off Brian went to buy a red dog puppy for £25.  He returned with a white bitch puppy, and £20 change!  MORA turned out to be the best £5 we have ever spent - she lived for more than fifteen years, and could still keep up with the gang in her dotage.

Since then we have never been without a white boxer.  Forget the horror stories about white boxers - they are great fun!  True, the gene for white colouring also codes for deafness, making a white boxer more likely to be deaf, but most white boxers have perfectly normal hearing, unless they don't want to hear, of course!

Some breeders still drown white pups, much to our disgust.  The usual argument is that they are 'genetically imperfect' to which I would argue that we are all genetically imperfect ourselves, so in that case do we all need to be shoved in a covered nappy bucket and drowned?  I think not.

Anyway, to continue.  Within a few years our 'Boxer army' had increased to five, and from then on it was a natural progression to working on Boxer Rescue.  Well, sort of.

Our introduction to Boxer Rescue was to suddenly have a red bitch dumped on us with a litter of mixed breed puppies.  A rescue contact quickly rehomed the bitch, but that left us with a terrible dilemma - the pups were a mix of Weimeraner/German Shepherd crossed with a Boxer, and they were 'genetically imperfect' to coin a phrase, only in this case it wasn't at the whim of a breeder.  These little balls of black fluff had dew claws coming out of their noses and ears, instead of being on the inside of the forelegs as they should be.  Unable to ascertain if there was any more serious damage internally, we were left with only one option: euthanasia.  I can still hear the screams of these little pups as they left this miserable world.

That was fifteen years ago, and we are still going strong on Boxer Rescue!  After a long association with a breed club dominated rescue, I parted company after giving evidence on behalf of the RSPCA against two of the trustees, one of whom posed as a vet in order to gain financially from docking tails.  This case went far deeper than the bare bones described here, but suffice to say that, as a result of this successful prosecution I knew that I could no longer work within a breed club rescue, as their ethics and mine were incompatible.

Tail docking is illegal in the UK, but the practice still goes on.  Here at Boxer Rescue (UK) we have rehomed Boxers with tails for many years, and have no problem with tails - long or short!  Two litters of rescue pups have been born here, and not one of them had their tails amputated, either through cutting or elastic banding.  Our veterinary surgeons will not contravene the regulations laid down in statute and upheld by the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons, and we respect that.

Our rescue work is undertaken voluntarily, and we derive a great deal of satisfaction from it - even if we do get telephone calls at all hours from people who want their dog to be collected - now!  So please, think - we are only human, we work to the best of our ability for the dogs in our care.  We are not a kennels, with opening hours for visitors to come and stroll around.  Many of the dogs here need peace and quiet to recover from traumatic situations, and are not ready to be sociable with strangers.  Please allow them to recover in their own good time in a secure setting.

Many thanks.