Aine (Kellaney Boxers): It´s no doubt that every dog has its fault, there is no perfect boxer. If you have to mate a female what would you advise to look for in the male? Monique Hodgkinson (Tanyati Boxers): Most definitely a male that is as close as possible to the Standard. As no dog is perfect, try to ensure that the male and female do not share the same fault/s. Purely cosmetic faults are more excusable in my eyes than faults in structure, so if you have a female with light eyes and an upright shoulder and the best male available to you that consistently produces excellent shoulders also has light eyes, I would take the risk. Light eyes are one of the easiest things to breed out, being a recessive gene. However, never lose sight of the importance of correct expression and ensure that the next generation is created using a dog that comes from generations of dark eyes. Pedigree is very important too. You need to know what the immediate ancestors are like, and what they are prepotent in producing. It is not good enough to look just at the male and the female. They may have been freaks of Nature, being nothing like their parents, or grandparents. The chances of a ‘one off’ beautiful dog producing consistently good offspring are very slight. Aine (Kellaney Boxers): Must the male cover all the weak points of the female or has to be the male nearest possible the standard? Monique Hodgkinson (Tanyati Boxers): As I mentioned earlier, you don’t fix one fault by using a dog that also has a fault but on the opposite side of the scale – you don’t breed a female whose nose is too long to male whose nose is too short. Correctness and a dog as close as possible to the Standard is what we (should) aim for. Therefore we need to use a dog that is close as possible to the Standard and as correct as possible in the particular attribute where our female is weak, in the hope that his genetic makeup for perfection in that characteristic is prepotent over our female’s genetic makeup for the fault. 2 wrongs don’t make a right.