GENERAL APPEARANCE
The ideal Boxer is a medium-sized, square built dog of good substance with short back, strong limbs, and short, tight-fitting coat. His well developed muscles are clean, hard and appear smooth under taut skin. His movements denote energy. The gait is firm, yet elastic, the stride free and ground-covering, the carriage proud. Developed to serve as guard, working and companion dog, he combines strength and agility with elegance and style. His expression is alert and temperament steadfast and tractable.

COLORS
Two of the colors are fawn and brindle. Fawn shades vary from light tan to mahogany. The brindle ranges from sparse, but clearly defined black stripes on a fawn background, to such a heavy concentration of black striping that the essential fawn background color barely, although clearly, shows through (which may create the appearance of "reverse brindling"). Boxers can also be white or check. Check boxers are mostly fawn or brindle, but more than 1/3 of their bodies is white. For more information on white boxers click here.

Boxers also have varying degrees of white on them. A boxer with a lot of white on his body is called flashy and a boxer with little to no white is called a classic or plain boxer.

Here are the basic colors:

EARS
Some boxers will have ears that are cropped and some will have natural ears. Boxer's ears were originally cropped so that when boxers were bull fighting the bull would have less to grab a hold of. Now that boxers no longer perform in that function, more and more owners are choosing to leave their boxers ears natural. Boxers that are used in shows will, most likely, continue to have their ears cropped as it is part of the AKC standard for our beloved breed.

TAILS
Most boxers that you come across will have docked tails, but not all of them. More and more boxers are sporting their natural tails, but as the AKC standard calls for docked tails they will probably be the norm.