Coat condition & malting

[samian]

Love this site - it's great to see such support, experience and knowledge shared amongst a community of Boxer lovers and breeders!!

My general question is:
We adopted an 8 month old puppy from a broken home - she is now just on 12 months. The sad part was she was pretty much left in the yard by herself, with little nutrition. She was very, very underweight and her claws, pads & coat/colour were in poor condition. Over the last couple of months, she has started loosing this coat (it was short and downey, like duck down) and the new coat coming through is 3 times darker and a lot longer - becoming what a normal coat looks like. Our other Boxer did not go through this coat change, she's always had a beautiful coat, although she did malt very badly the first year. Is this normal for a pup that was in bad condition? Her bloodlines are European, but I'm not sure if this means anything?

[kassa]

It sounds quite normal. A friend of mine just got
a young adult in that was being fed Puppy Chow (!).
His coat was all washed out and fuzzy, as you describe.
Just a few weeks of excellent food and his real coat
has come through, darker and the correct texture.

It's simply malnutrition Same thing happens to
people -- your hair gets brittle and dull. Because hair
grows so quickly the changes can be seen quickly
once you start nourishing the poor baby.

[samian]

Thanks for confirming what we suspected!! Lola is becoming a beautiful girl. Her pads are still quite bad, although a little improved recently, hopefully in a short time they won't be as dry and cracked. How people can mistreat any animal, let alone our wonderful Boxer friends, is beyond me!!