bought a boxer pup, tell me everything!

[AngryBeaver]

We get him in about 6 weeks.
We have never had a puppy before, but feel it's time.
I have 4 children between 1-9.

Any and all advice very welcome!

[JoffreyBaratheon]

And check your fences are secure and high. Really high. Woman over the road had a boxer and I was constantly re-capturing it as it bounded down the road. Their garden fences weren't high enough.

I said it would get run over and get run over it did. Worse still, in front of a school bus of children (not run over by bus - by a car on t'other side). Which her daughter was in. She told me afterwards it didn't die straight away - they rushed her to the vet's but she had massive internal bleeding. She was a lovely, friendly, sweet, beautiful dog. And dead before she was even one.

The man who ran it over tried to sue her as well, to add injury to insult.

[JoffreyBaratheon]

Didn't mean that as negative as it looks!

Just my knee-jerk reaction when I hear the word "boxer" I always see her lovely face in my mind's eye and feel that frustration I felt for those months, knowing something would happen if the owners didn't make their fence higher! And it was so easily preventable.

The fact she had no recall didn't help either, so I would invest as much time as possible into training. Get the kids involved, as well.

Like all bull breeds, they are beautiful, friendly, gorgeous dogs. Happy for you - so exciting to get a pup! Enjoy your pup and work hard on the training to keep her safe so you can enjoy her for many years to come.

[AngryBeaver]

Nope, all advice is much appreciated. I love him already, so obviously want to keep him safe.
We have no fencing at all as we have a large section of land that merges with a bush reserve.
Harley anyone in the is
And has fencing as most people either have large/rugged sections or find it just too expensive to fence (everything costs x3 the price of uk here...at least)

The dogs are just trained to stay on the properties.

[AngryBeaver]

Can I ask, what do we think about crate training?
Do you just have a big crate in your house for the next 10-12 years?! Not keen on that idea.

Also, raw feeding. Is that a contentious issue?

[KiwiJude]

We had a crate for Cooper, well three actually as he grew in size, but weaned him out of it when summer came and we wanted him to be on his hammock bed. We only used it for nighttime - it was great for knowing where he was at night and he was always very happy to hop into bed. We also had a crate in the car for him until we could trust him not to chew anything and the next size crate was too big to fit in the car.

All our crates we bought second hand on TM and they all sold quickly when we were finished with them for what we paid for them :)

As for raw - it depends on who you talk to haha. With our first boxer we would be walking along Victoria St in Cambridge heading for coffee before we opened the shop and people would stop us to say they had boxers and how beautiful he was, then always the next question would be what do you feed him. No matter what we said it was always wrong!!