Boxer Dachshund Mix: A Huge Size Gap and Two Inherited Risks
A male Boxer weighs at least 65 pounds. A standard dachshund tops out at 32. That gap is the first thing you need to understand about a Boxer dachshund mix, and it’s the least of what the cross inherits.
The mix is rare and no registry recognizes it. You’ll see it called a “Boxshund”. Nobody has measured what these dogs grow into or how healthy they are, but there’s solid research on each parent, and two of its findings change what you should ask for.
What a Boxer dachshund mix is
A cross between a Boxer and a dachshund, standard or miniature. Here is what the AKC lists for each parent:
| Dachshund | Boxer | |
|---|---|---|
| Height | 8-9 in (standard), 5-6 in (miniature) | 23-25 in (male), 21.5-23.5 in (female) |
| Weight | 16-32 lb (standard), 11 lb and under (miniature) | 65-80 lb (male), about 15 lb less for females |
| Life expectancy | 12-16 years | 10-12 years |
A standard dachshund at the top of its range weighs under half what a male Boxer weighs at the bottom of his.
Put a miniature next to a Boxer and the difference is several times over, so what happens when you mix them is something nobody has measured.
How big does it get?
I can’t give you a number, and neither can anyone else. I found no source that measured adult dogs from this cross, so any figure you’re shown is a guess dressed up as a fact.
What the parents give you is the outer range: from a miniature dachshund’s 11 pounds to a male Boxer’s 80. Where does a particular dog fall inside that? Anyone’s guess, until it’s grown.
If you already own a dog someone told you is this mix, be careful. Looks are a poor guide to parentage, and a cheek-swab DNA test will tell you more than any photo comparison you can make. Knowing the answer can change how you look after its heart and back.
The heart: what the Boxer parent brings
Boxers carry a well-known inherited heart condition, arrhythmogenic right ventricular cardiomyopathy, or ARVC. The AKC’s breed page says responsible breeders screen for it.
It lists two checks: an ARVC DNA test, and a Holter monitor test that’s repeated every year. Does the first one do what you’d expect? That’s where it gets interesting.
The inheritance matters more than the name, so it’s worth a closer look. A pedigree analysis of UK Boxers, published by Cattanach and colleagues in 2015, confirmed an autosomal dominant mode of inheritance with incomplete penetrance.
Dominant means one copy of the responsible variant is enough. Incomplete means not every dog that carries it becomes ill. Here’s the part I’d add myself, and it is my inference rather than something that paper tested: a dominant condition isn’t diluted by crossing. A Boxer parent that carries it can pass it to a mixed puppy just as easily as to a purebred one.
What the DNA test does and doesn’t tell you
This is the surprising bit: the same study found dogs with and without the striatin mutation in both affected and normal Boxers, which the authors took to show the mutation isn’t what causes the disease. It’s a marker sitting near the real one.
The practical result, according to the authors, is that affected dogs without the mutation go undiagnosed, while many normal dogs with it are wrongly labelled as carrying the disease. They also found penetrance far lower than an earlier estimate of roughly 80 per cent in heterozygous dogs.
So when a breeder tells you the Boxer parent “tested clear”, ask what was tested. A DNA result alone doesn’t settle it, whereas the Holter result is the check that looks at the heart itself, and it’s the one you should ask to see.
The back: leg length is not disc risk
The dachshund side brings intervertebral disc disease, and Dachshund Health UK, the registered charity behind breed health work in Britain, puts the lifetime figure at around one in four dachshunds. Bruno’s disc episode ended in surgery and a long recovery, so I read this part of the research twice.
Here’s the finding that matters for a cross: a gene called FGF4 has an extra copy on chromosome 12 that affects both leg length and the discs. Brown and colleagues found it carried an odds ratio of 51.23 for disc disease across breeds, with a confidence interval of 46.69 to 56.20.
The two effects don’t follow the same rule. For height the gene is semidominant, so a dog with one copy ends up with legs somewhere in between, but for discs it is dominant, and the authors suggest one additional copy is sufficient to cause type I disc disease.
What does that do to a Boxer cross? A puppy with one copy could have legs noticeably longer than a dachshund’s and still carry the full disc risk, so you can’t use leg length to judge the back. It’s easy to look at a longer-legged dog and relax, but the research says you shouldn’t draw that conclusion.
Which variety the dachshund parent was still matters, because smooth, longhaired and wirehaired dachshunds had very different disc disease rates in the largest survey of the breed, and the English Bulldog cross sets out those figures in full alongside what that survey found about weight and exercise, which runs against the advice most owners are given.
Which parent was the dam?
With this much size difference, the dam’s size matters, and the Merck Veterinary Manual lists fetal-maternal disproportion among the abnormalities that can lead to a difficult birth, and names oversized fetuses as one thing that can overstretch the uterus until it fails to respond.
No study I found has measured this for a Boxer and a dachshund. The manual’s list of breeds known to be at higher risk names Bulldogs, Pugs, Boston Terriers and Chihuahuas, and includes neither of these two.
My own view, which you’re free to weigh differently: I wouldn’t buy a puppy from a planned litter of this cross. I found no health scheme that covers both parents’ conditions together, and the size mismatch raises a welfare question for the dam.
The same logic applies to the Cavalier’s heart in the Cavalier cross, where screened parents made the difference. Bruno came from the breeder Sharon after a four-month wait, and I asked her a lot of questions first. If you do end up meeting a puppy, ask who the dam was, how big she is and whether she needed a Caesarean.
Energy, and the one thing the two breeds disagree on
The Boxer is a playful, high-energy dog that needs ample exercise every day.
The AKC adds that young Boxers spend a good deal of time jumping and leaping about, and that they’re constantly in need of reminders to stay down.
The AKC’s dachshund page says the opposite: dachshunds aren’t built for distance running, leaping or strenuous swimming.
Those two sentences are the daily-management problem of this cross.
You might get a dog with a Boxer’s bounce and a dachshund’s spine. The AKC’s advice for dachshunds is to monitor their activities to avoid back injury, and that applies doubly to one with energy to burn.
Heat is the other practical point, since the AKC says the Boxer doesn’t have a high tolerance for extreme heat or cold and should live inside the house as a member of the family.
Who this cross is wrong for
Anyone who needs to know what they’re getting. Size, heart risk and back risk are all open questions in this mix, and you can only answer each one with a specific document or test.
It’s also wrong if your home has a steep staircase and you haven’t got a plan for it. A strong, bouncy dog with a long back is a poor fit for a house built around stairs.
Who it suits: you, if you already have the dog, most often a rescue of guessed parentage, and you’re ready to get a DNA test, have its heart checked every year and manage its jumping.
Boxer dachshund mix: common questions
What is a hybrid Boxer dog?
A cross between a Boxer and another breed, which in the dachshund version is informally called a Boxshund, though no registry recognizes it and the dogs vary widely in size and build from one litter to the next.
Is a Boxer mix a good dog?
It depends on the mix, and for this one both parents are lively, but the cross combines a heart condition that runs in Boxers with the back problems of dachshunds. A good dog here means one with screened parents and a plan for exercise.
How big does a Boxer dachshund mix get?
No measured figure exists, so the parents give you the range: the AKC lists a male Boxer at 65-80 pounds and a standard dachshund at 16-32 pounds, with miniatures at 11 pounds and under.
How long does a Boxer dachshund mix live?
Nobody has published a figure, so the parents bracket it at 10-12 years for the Boxer and 12-16 for the dachshund, on the AKC’s numbers, and where yours lands depends mostly on the health it inherits.
What is the best breed to mix with a Dachshund?
No study ranks them, and for this question the evidence points at a different test: whether the other parent’s inherited conditions can be screened, and whether the dachshund parent was a variety with a lower disc disease rate.
