There are many coat colors for a boxer. Standard AKC has rules on how to look but the standard pet can be any color. A boxer, is a boxer, is a boxer !

" Colors Of the Boxers "


FAWN - This color varies from light tan to mahogany. The darker red color preferred.

BRINDLE - This is a fawn dog with black stripes.

REVERSE BRINDLE - This is a black dog with fawn stripes, reverse of the regular brindle.

WHITE - This is NOT an albino. A white Boxer is all white or they may even have patches of fawn or brindle of one or more places.

CHECK - This is a term for a brindle or fawn dog with approximently 1/3 - 2/3 white.

BLACK - This is a term for sealed brindle. This is when the brindle stripes are so tight that there is no appearance of a stripe.


" Markings on the Boxer "


FLASHY-This term refers to a fawn or brindle Boxer with white markings covering up to 1/3 of the body.

PLAIN-This term refers to a fawn or brindle Boxer with little or no white.

SEMI FLASHY- This is not a technical term, but rather a term in which some breeders/exhibitors in the US refer to a dog who may only exhibit white markings on the face, chest and legs, or exhibits a partial collar with white tipped feet and plain face.

MIS-MARK (overly flashy)-This is a term used to describe markings on a dog that is "out of place".





" Fawn "
This color varies from light tan to mahogany. The darker red color preferred.

" Brindle "
This is a fawn dog with black stripes. These stripes can be very sparse (with as little as only one brindle area on the body. Some people have even registered dogs incorrectly as they did not notice the brindle on the dog) or very dense (with the dog appearing to be black, but, upon closer examination, you will find fawn color) This color is often referred to as "BLACK or REVERSE BRINDLE". So named because the dog APPEARS to be black with fawn stripes.

" White "

This is NOT an albino. A white Boxer is all white or they may even have patches of fawn or brindle of one or more places; ears, around eyes, top of head, on the back or even the base of the tail, but rarely on the side of the body and no more than 1/3 (which is fairly much). The color is called extreme piebald spotting. The genetics is sw sw. This color is the only permitted color in breeds such as Sealyham Terriers and Great Pyrenees and is a common color in English Setters. The white Boxer does not have the typical black mask.






" Check "

This is a term for a brindle or fawn dog with approximently 1/3 - 2/3 white. The white will be on the same places as on a flashy Boxer, but to a greater extent. They may have white on the thighs going all the way across the back, or white collar that goes over on the shoulders and back or across the forehead to meet the white on the face. It may even be that the colored patch on the back resembles a saddle with white all around it. This color is called piebald spotting and is found in other breeds such as Saint Bernard and Beagle. The genetics is sp sp or si sw. The si gene may have been found in historical Boxers, but is probably extinct now. If there were born several check Boxers from one sire or dam, this could be an indication of its existence however.

"The Mysteries of Brindle" by Cal Gruver Brindle or fawn? Most of us think of brindle as a choice of coat color opposed to fawn. Strictly speaking, that's not really the case. The Boxer has a basic coat color of fawn, and only fawn. Any variation on that--such as brindling or white markings--is something applied to that fawn coat. You could compare it to Henry Ford's Model T, all of which were black. But you could put any decorations on that basic black that you wished. In the canine genetic scheme, basic coat color is located at locus A, brindling at E, and white marking at S. In order of dominance, S is over E and A, and E is over A. Thus, whatever locus S says will be the amount of white--from none to all--will appear on both brindles and fawns. Brindling, however, can only appear on the fawn areas and not the white. At the E locus, where we find brindling, the genetic function is to determine how extensive and in what manner black will be distributed over the dog's coat. There are three alleles (genetic choices) here--E-br, E, and e--only two of which are in the Boxer genetic pool. The order of dominance is E-br (brindle), E (normal extension of black) and e (no extension of black). For some time there was a debate as to whether e was in the Boxer and produced the fawn coat by restricting black pigment. An example of an e/e-dog would be a Yellow Lab. As we can often see, the fawn Boxer's coat is not totally without black hairs, especially around the ears. And the deer-red coat is so because of a mixture of black pigment and hair with the fawn.That presence of black pigment has convinced geneticists that e is not in the Boxer genetic pool. E, which extends black in the normal amount that the basic coat color gene calls for, produces a fawn Boxer when inherited from both parents. Now that is confusing! In a Lab, E creates an all-black dog. Why not in the Boxer? Well, the answer is that the gene which determines the basic coat color of the Boxer, itself greatly restricts the amount of black in that coat. Thus it gets mostly yellow pigment, creating fawn Boxers in all their shadings. But the Lab's coat color gene allows much black pigment in the hairs, so the E gene puts it in. When E-br is present, however, it dominates and the black stripes are then laid into the fawn coat. Just how intense the striping is, along with how dark the basic fawn was, determines the shadings from "golden" to "black" brindle. As for the genetic probabilities when one breeds a brindle, well that depends greatly on whether that brindle had one fawn parent or two brindle parents. Since a fawn Boxer can only be so by having two E genes (E/E), a brindle with a fawn parent has to have at least one E also. Because it is a brindle, we know that the other gene is E-br. When such a brindle (E-br/E) is mated with a fawn (E/E), the probability for the puppies is 50% brindle and 50% fawn, providing that both dogs do not carry the all-white gene. The situation is somewhat different if the brindle had two brindle parents. There is a definite possibility then that a brindle gene may have been inherited from each parent, making a pup with Ebr/Ebr at the E locus. A "double" brindle will always produce all brindles, even when mated to a fawn. But if one or two of the grandparents were fawn, then there could still be a loose E gene floating around. Some of our double brindle's brindle siblings could still whelp a fawn puppy. Willis (1989) speculates that the darkest brindles might have two E-br genes. He offered no proof for that, and it flies in the face of the fact that "black" brindles are producing fawn pups regularly. Something that would not be possible with two brindle genes. More likely, these dark brindles have genetic modifiers that intensify the brindling. It is certainly possible to mate a fawn and a brindle and get a "golden" brindle and a "black" brindle in the same litter. Neither would be a double brindle. Another myth that will probably die hard is that by occasionally breeding a brindle to your fawns you will keep future fawns from fading to a khaki tan. John Wagner had that in his book, The Boxer, written around 1937 and reprinted into the 1950s. Unfortunately, it appeared even in Billie McFadden's fine book, The New Boxer (1989), when she reprinted a passage from Enno Meyer's Judging the Boxer (1945). As Willis (1989) points out, there is no evidence at all for such an assumption. If one wants to keep getting deep-red fawns, then one should select deep-red fawns for breeding. Or at least keep selectively breeding for a darker hue of fawn. A better explanation might be that dark brindles also have a dark fawn coat, and that carries over to the fawn color of an offspring. Clarence C. Little, the great canine geneticist, put another allele at the E locus. This was E-m, which he believed caused the black mask seen in so many dogs, including Boxers. Amazingly, there are still books on canine genetics coming out with that assumption (see Willis, 1989). If it were true, then a brindle dog with one fawn parent would have to have three E-type genes (Ebr/Em/E) to have a black mask. A genetic impossibility, but Boxers like that are everywhere. Roy Robinson (1990) labels Little's assumption a probable error and for want of a better solution lists a new locus, M, as the determinant for a mask. The two alleles here would be M (black mask) and m (no mask).

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