This is posted by the former poster named Lure.Some may have encountered the name in passing.Only getting this out of the way so I don’t seem like a party crasher or newbie seeking approval.Have a new 'puter for awhile so decided to upgrade my (different) email .
So what’s with boxers?Not the human ones the dog.What was their original purpose?Seem to be a mix of a bulldog with a more sleek, running type frame.
I’ve only ever encountered one semi aggresive/possibly scared one.All the others seemed really great people dogs,despite that fearsome appearance.
Ok.I’ve found similar but still doesn’t answer my why?as far as the boxers build (sleek could be a running dog chasing prey) vs.the squat English bull,known more for tenaciousness than running stamina.
I can’t find a source pointing me to this seeming disparity of bull dog duties,one(the English) hold him while I do him in (sorta like a matador’s dog),while the boxer build seems to me more like,chase,catch,and hold kind.Like a field dog ahead of his human partners.
Maybe that’s how they slaughtered their food in Germany?No animal husbandry?
The English bulldog was never used as a “hold him while I do him in” dog. Contrary to popular myth they weren’t used by butchers. Why would a butcher in Europe, where every bull is led around on a leash, need to have a dog hold an animal for slaughter? They simply tied the animals up if they required restraint at all.
Bulldogs and boxers they were used for bull baiting. A tame bull was led into a pit and the dogs set on it one after another. The dog that held the bull longest won. Nasty, cruel and brutal, but there was no TV.
The difference in leg length was a regional variation in bulldogs. Some are extremely short and squat to acheive maximum weight for biting power. Makes it hard for the bull to throw them around. Others are long legged so the bull can’t lift the dogs back legs off the ground.
I imagine it doesn’t matter much. It’s the ability hang on that matters.
Think of it like gun dogs. Some are big and fairly hairless like labradors. Some are small and hairy and close to the ground like spaniels, some are big and hairy like poodles. The differences for dogs bred for pretty much exactly the same purpose are fairly large. There’s reasons why the breeders picked those characteristics but in reality it doesn’t matter much what they look like.
The link that Blake provided gives a good long-range overview, but it should be noted that there were no Boxers prior to the 19th century.
One strain of Bullenbeisser was being bred to smaller sizes by the early eighteenth century, but they remained Bullenbeissers. In the early 19th century, some German breeders began experimenting by breeding Bullenbeissers and English Bulldogs. (The variant of English Bulldog used was not quite as low to the ground as the breed has come to be characterized, today.) The earliest breedings occurred between the 1830s and 1850s, the first “true” Boxer was not bred until 1895, and the breed rules were not agreed upon until 1902.
As to the purpose of Boxers, it appears to have been nothing more than a desire to have a good play companion for humans with a particular appearance. I am not aware of any actual hunting done by the early Boxers (and bear- and bull-baiting had already been outlawed in Germany before the breed was developed). The earliest uses to which Boxers were put had to do with police work and guard duty in the military. (Boxers were, apparently, used quite effectively as anti-sniper patrols during WWI, but I have not discovered whether this occurred on the French front or the Italian front.)
