by: Amy Howells
Feed him a balanced diet.
Additional tips from owners include:
Give an occasional yogurt treat
Worms is another everyday problem in Boxers but the puppy is more likely to get sick from worms than the grown up Boxer.
The sick one would lose weight and become weak, suffer from upset stomach, poor growth, listlessness or even lung trouble.
They may impede your puppy´s growth and cause him to have a potbelly or be thin and have a shoddy-looking coat.
Your grown Boxer may not be showing any sign of worms but he could spread them more than the sick puppy, through large amount of larvae or eggs passed out in the feces.
If your Boxer has tapeworms, he has fleas too because part of the tapeworm life cycle occurs in flea as the host. As such, treatments against flea and tapeworm are normally prescribed together.
Some, like the roundworm, that infect dogs can also get passed on to children.
In more serious cases, your dog will catch cough, pneumonia and develop lung problems.
There are different types of worms that infect dogs such as tapeworm, roundworm, ringworm and heartworm. De-worm your Boxer puppy every month and your grown Boxer, every 6 months.
Puppies get sick from worms, more so than dogs.
But your infected grown Boxers help spread the worms more through their droppings that would contain large number of larvae and/or eggs.
Released into the surrounding, these larvae and eggs could infect other animals and even children.
The tapeworms have a flat, segmented body.
You see them as single segments or chains that resemble segments of rice in the droppings of infected canine.
Part of the tapeworm´s life cycle occurs in the flea as the host.
Therefore, if your Boxer has tapeworms, it has fleas too and the treatments for both are usually prescribed together by the vet.
The roundworms (toxocara) live and produce hundreds of eggs in the intestine.
They cause digestive upset in puppies, poor growth, and thin or out-of-conditioned coat.
The infected puppies may become listless, have a potbelly or tucked in appearance.
Once the roundworms migrated from the gut to the lungs, your Boxer can suffer lung damage, cough and pneumonia.
The roundworm eggs in the dog droppings get passed out and about.
These are very hardy eggs, resistant to heat and cold, and can survive up to 7 years in the soil. The eggs can pass on to children through ingestion and cause them to fall sick as well.
As precautions, you can toilet train your Boxer puppy to use a place where you can easily clean up and dispose of the droppings into the sewer. Have your children wash their hands every time after they handle the puppies and discourage your puppies from licking people hands or faces.