A Very Special Animal-versary

Not to take anything away from the 150th Anniversary of Honest Abe's Gettysburg Address, but October 19 is special for another reason. It's the birth date of my brother. Happy 7th Birthday to best little, bat-pig-dog brother that a big brindle boxer brother could ever ask for! We love you, Rog!

General Roger E. Lee, General Newlysses S. Grant and Nurse Clara Barkton

In honor of two special events that occurred on this date in history, I present you with the Boxer Address prepared for the American Boxer Club's 2013 Regional Show that was held in Gettysburg earlier last month.

The Boxer Address

Three score and eighteen years ago our fathers brought forth in New York City a new American Boxer Club, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all Boxers are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great Regional specialty, testing whether that dog, or any dog so whelped and so trained, can long endure. We are met in a great ring of competition. We have come to select the class winners, as a final chance for those who here present their hopes that one Boxer is Best Of Breed or High In Trial or Best Puppy. It is altogether correct and appropriate that we should do this.

And, with a sense of sportsmanship, we can cheer, we can applaud, we can celebrate our grand winners. The beautiful dogs, fawn and brindle, who strut here, have earned our respect, far above our poor opinions to enhance or fault. The dog world may little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it should never forget what our Boxers do here. It is for us the breeders and owners, rather, to be dedicated to the future well-being for which our dogs who compete here have thus far so nobly progressed. It is for us to be dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that along with these winners we continue our devotion to making the Boxer be the best of all breeds - healthy and versatile and with proper conformation - that we here highly resolve that these dogs shall not compete in vain - that this Boxer community shall have a new birth of friendship and good will - and that renewed dedication "of the Boxer, by the Boxer, for the Boxer" shall not perish from the earth.