In the Raoul household - which happened to be a South American Embassy in Canberra - one of the children of the family was an older girl who was in her early twenties. Maria-Lucia an extremely vivacious and pretty girl who loved shopping, going to and giving parties, attending receptions for visiting dignitaries, generally one could say that she enjoyed her life with all it's attendant trappings.

There was however one small hiccup in her life, a problem in fact and that was that her underwear, sweet little delicate lacey numbers, kept disappearing from the washing line in the back garden of the embassy. There one minute and gone the next ... but the big question was where were her smalls disappearing to? who indeed was the culprit? Had anyone at all seen questionable people lurking in the wrong place at their right time? No answers surfaced..although over the months her smalls still kept disappearing.

Well....the answer came to the mystery was revealed in a most unusual manner. One day Raoul, Maria- Lucia's father, was out taking the air with el panchito, the embassy dog, when one of the security post guards on duty at the Prime Minister's Lodge ( this was the 1960's when Harold Holt was the Prime Minister) came hurrying over to speak with him.

In fact what the guard actually asked Raoul was, whether the large boxer dog who was trotting alongside Raol was his? Because if this was the case then this was very same dog who appeared to have a prediliction for ladies underwear. Seems he had been collecting Maria-Lucia's bras and knickers from the washing line and then crossing the road to drop them off at Prime Minster's Lodge - right in the middle of the front lawn where they were picked up by the on-duty guards! They had collected and stored them in a box in the guard post awaiting collection by their rightful owner.....so embarrassing for Maria-Lucia - but the upside of course, was that finally an answer had arrived to a most disturbing question...

"Yes - we do have a boxer called Pancho - but I am totally unsure about his 'um - liking for ladies underwear "

Then he thought about it and the penny dropped with a clunk. His daughter had been complaining constantly and loudly about her missing underwear - so maybe, just maybe the culprit was el Panchito!.

He called his daughter who then went across to the Prime Minister's Guard Box where she blushingly found, identified and collected her missing smalls. malo, malo panchito!!

copyright a.a.gallagher 2008

The following links are obviously not about Boxers but are very, very funny videos about "satanic" Jack Russells - and as we  have a Jack Russell/Miniature Foxterrier "Harriett" who makes us laugh regularly we have enjoyed these!