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How big they get, what they cost to feed, and the first year that decides it.
De Pet Valley · · 4 min read
If your Boerboel's belly looks swollen or tight and it is retching without bringing anything up, stop reading and phone a vet immediately — deep-chested dogs can bloat, and it is an emergency measured in hours.
A Boerboel is a South African farm dog bred to hold a homestead, and it will take over your house and your budget in roughly equal measure. Grown, a male weighs about what a person does, eats accordingly, and is stronger than you well before its first birthday — which is why the first year matters more than any other.
Males usually finish somewhere around 64 to 70cm at the shoulder and 70 to 90kg. Females run smaller, closer to 60cm and 55 to 70kg. The ranges are broad because the breed is broad. A good Boerboel is heavy rather than tall.
They also keep filling out long after they stop growing upward. A two-year-old is not the same animal as the eighteen-month-old you got used to, and most of the difference is chest and head.
Plan the house for it. A dog this size clears a coffee table with its tail, cannot be lifted into a bakkie by one person, and needs a gate that latches rather than one that mostly stays shut.
Food is the running cost people underestimate. An adult Boerboel eats several times what a medium dog eats, so a large bag that would last a small dog most of a season lasts this one a few weeks. Work that out in kilograms per month before you take the puppy, not after.
While it is growing, feed a food formulated for large breeds. Those are built to grow a big dog slowly, and growing one fast is how you end up with joint problems that no amount of care later will undo. Do not add calcium or joint supplements on your own initiative — that is a conversation for your vet, not for the internet.
Buy the biggest bag you can store properly, sealed and out of the sun. Food gone stale in a Boland summer gets refused by exactly the dog you cannot afford to have skipping meals.
Puppies are open to new things for a short window in their first few months, and what they meet in it becomes normal for life. For a guarding breed that window is the whole game. Use it on men in hats, children on bicycles, the gate, the bakkie, other dogs, and the vet's table, while the puppy is still small enough to carry.
Teach handling before you need it. Feet, ears, mouth, collar grab, standing still to be weighed. A 12kg puppy that objects is a nuisance. An 80kg adult that objects is a problem you will pay somebody else to solve.
Adolescence arrives somewhere in the second half of the first year, and it looks exactly like the training has stopped working. It has not. Keep the rules identical, keep the lead on, and wait it out. This is the stage at which a great many big dogs get handed on.
A Boerboel was bred to hold a yard and it does that job whether you asked for it or not. It will read the gate, the delivery, the visitor it has not met before. None of that is a fault. All of it needs managing.
Manage it structurally rather than hopefully. Fencing that holds, a gate that cannot be shouldered open, a plan for what happens when someone arrives, and a dog that will go to a spot on cue when you need the plan. Training alone is not a containment system.
In South Africa the owner carries the consequences of what their dog does, and municipalities set their own by-laws on confinement and on how many dogs a property may keep. Check yours, and check your complex or body corporate rules, before you buy rather than after.
The coat is short and easy. A brush, an occasional wash, and shedding you will find on dark clothes. What genuinely needs attention is the folds around the face, the ears, and the nails, which on a dog this heavy get long enough to change the way it stands.
Heat is the real one. A heavy dog with a broad muzzle is working harder in a Paarl January than it looks. Walk early or late, keep water in more than one place, and never leave one in a car or on a bare concrete run with no shade.
Exercise should be steady rather than extreme. Long slow walks and something to think about beat a hard run, and running a large-breed puppy on hard ground before its joints have finished is a debt you pay at seven.
A Boerboel suits someone who is home, consistent, physically able to hold one on a lead, and honest about the next twelve years. It does not suit a first dog, a shared yard, or a household where the rules change depending on who is in the room.
If that reads as discouraging, good. The breed's trouble in this country has never been bad dogs. It has been good dogs bought by people who wanted the look and got the whole animal.