What Is a Reverse Boxer?

If you're interested in breeds of boxers, you may have heard of the brindle boxer, a boxer with white markings on the face, chest and sometimes feet and a tan coat marbled with black stripes. If you're unfamiliar with the reverse brindle boxer, the first thing to understand is that the reverse brindle boxer is part of the brindle breed, but this type of boxer appears to be black and white.

  1. Reverse Brindle Appearance

    • A reverse brindle boxer is sometimes called a black boxer because it appears to have a black coat. This breed of boxer still has the white markings of a brindle boxer down its nose and chest and sometimes over its feet, but the rest of the boxer's coat looks completely black. This is because reverse brindle boxers have an overconcentration of dark stripes.

    Reverse Brindle Versus Brindle

    • A reverse brindle boxer is part of the brindle breed, which is a boxer that typically has white markings down the nose, chest and stomach and on the feet. The coat of a standard brindle is brown and marbled with dark stripes. The reverse brindle maintains the white markings, and the only fundamental difference between a brindle and a reverse brindle boxer is that the reverse brindle has an overconcentration of dark stripes, leading it to appear black.

    Reverse Brindle Genetics

    • Boxers have only two coat colors: fawn, which is plain, and tan or brindle, which is tan and marbled with dark stripes. They also have only two genes that determine white markings: a solid gene, which means no white markings, and a gene for white markings. It is recessive for brindle boxers to have so many stripes that they appear black, and this is why some say they have a "rare black" boxer. However, while reverse brindle boxers are less common than standard brindle boxers, they are not considered rare.

    Reverse Brindle in Other Countries

    • In the United States, a brindle boxer that has an extreme concentration of dark stripes, causing it to appear black, is called a reverse brindle boxer or a black boxer. In Canada the reverse brindle is more commonly called a "seal" or "sealed" brindle; this term is sometimes used in the United States as well. In other parts of the world the reverse brindle is often called a dark brindle.