Hi, I am new to Dobermans and the website and wondering if anyone could give some general training advice. I am in the UK and have a slightly odd situation where I have been looking after a neighbour’s Doberman for the last ten months - at first the owner and the bitch pup were both living with us but for the last eight months the owner has just been dropping in for a few hours every few weeks to see her. The pup has done better being in a stable environment - she was imported from Serbia as a lockdown purchase, delivered in the back of a car, and turned out to be 27 weeks old on seeing her passport. She had diahorrea and then one episode of hemorrhagic gastroenteritis, but we have found food that suits her and now at 15 months old the vet says she is in excellent condition.
However, this is not a breed I know or to be honest would have chosen. We love her very much but have always had rescue border collies which are not easy themselves but in a different way. She has settled in brilliantly with an elderly collie bitch, a three-year-old dog collie, and an eighteen-month-old feral bitch (something like your Carolina dogs) - all neutered as rescues, all obedience trained and good-tempered. The Doberman is bottom of the pecking order and happy there, being quite shy. There are only two adults in the house, my husband works from home, we have no dog dominance issues and all the dogs live in the house and have access at all times to a large enclosed concrete yard. When we are around the dogs come around the 20 acres we live on. Otherwise she gets one good walk with lots of loose running in the morning and a shorter walk seeing to the horses in the fields in the evening. She sleeps in a crate in a room with the other dogs.
My questions for those of you with experience of this breed are the following.
- she can be nervous-aggressive although this is improving as she gets older. She nipped a random running guy on a footpath 7 months ago and I have been taking her weekly to group obedience training since - she went straight through Kennel Club Bronze good citizen award test and is expected to easily pass the Silver Award in October. But she remains unpredictable with people and I do not trust her with children. She is fine if we accept people into the yard and just stays back to look them over before greeting, but if someone enters the yard unaccompanied she sometimes just barks a bit, sometimes is more jumping up and barking in their faces. Kids she can stare at and sometimes jump up at even on a leash. She has good training focus (she clicker-trained for eye contact really fast and is totally focussed at group training classes - we do retrieve, wait and recall loose amongst a changing group of 10 mixed dogs no problem) so I have been distracting her with commands and exercises when kids come along and it has worked well, but any advice on predicting her behaviour better? I did not like the speed at which the nip happened - it caused a blood-blister but the guy was very nice about it because she was a puppy. She is tall and 29 kgs now and I think he would be less forgiving. I especially don’t like the attitude to small children but we can’t easily desensitise her with none at home - how do you ask someone if you can use their kid as a guinea-pig?!
- When I took her to the vet for her jabs last month she wouldn’t go near him and was guarding/staring - I gave her to the veterinary nurse and left the room and she was fine - they jabbed her, weighed her, listened to her heart etc without needing a muzzle though I told them she was muzzle-trained and to use one if they wanted. The vet was happy enough with this solution but is there’s a way you can train Dobermans turn off the guarding behaviour in veterinary or similar situations? And is this closer relationship with me than I expected going to be a problem if her owner decides he does wants her after all? She has bonded with us, and she is her owner’s first dog bar a Labrador when he was a young kid.
- we spent effort introducing her to the horses and she is excellent with them and cows, avoiding them quietly and coming out riding with the horse sometimes. Sheep are a different matter! We haven’t let an incident happen but she is way too keen. If they are still or come over she sniffs them and does nothing but if they run she would chase given a chance. Any ideas how to control this? Our other dogs are all 100% with stock so she is getting no encouragement. We are surrounded by farms so this is important.
- she is pleasingly sociable with other dogs if they are polite - at training she slam-dunked an aggressive young dog that got loose off his longline and went straight for her with his teeth out. She got him on the ground with lots of fangs and barking but no contact and he ran away - the trainer shrugged it off as a completely reasonable reaction to a stranger rushing up yelling at her and commented on her self-control. However, she is horrified by the little Maltipoos and things that meet and greet by being over-friendly and waving their feet in her face. My other dogs are unimpressed by this but she is horrified and air-snaps and retreats behind me. Ditto very young puppies who are OTT - she is a bit horrified on a leash, better off a leash. Do Dobermans have a bigger sense of personal space than other breeds / are more stand-offish? She is good at the moment with other dogs and I want that to continue, not to muck it up by getting a situation wrong. Also, my trainer says entire young bitches can be more flighty than neutered bitches (she has had one season) - is this your experience and does it settle down? I have only had rescue dogs, already neutered.
Sorry this is such a long post but I feel a bit cut loose with this dog and you all seem to know the breed well. For what it is worth she is I cropped, undocked, and likes to cuddle except when she is stealing shoes and rough-housing with her feral dog sister. Then she is like a cross between a kangaroo and a crocodile! I am grateful for any advice you can offer on getting it right so, whatever happens, she has the best chance of a good future.
However, this is not a breed I know or to be honest would have chosen. We love her very much but have always had rescue border collies which are not easy themselves but in a different way. She has settled in brilliantly with an elderly collie bitch, a three-year-old dog collie, and an eighteen-month-old feral bitch (something like your Carolina dogs) - all neutered as rescues, all obedience trained and good-tempered. The Doberman is bottom of the pecking order and happy there, being quite shy. There are only two adults in the house, my husband works from home, we have no dog dominance issues and all the dogs live in the house and have access at all times to a large enclosed concrete yard. When we are around the dogs come around the 20 acres we live on. Otherwise she gets one good walk with lots of loose running in the morning and a shorter walk seeing to the horses in the fields in the evening. She sleeps in a crate in a room with the other dogs.
My questions for those of you with experience of this breed are the following.
- she can be nervous-aggressive although this is improving as she gets older. She nipped a random running guy on a footpath 7 months ago and I have been taking her weekly to group obedience training since - she went straight through Kennel Club Bronze good citizen award test and is expected to easily pass the Silver Award in October. But she remains unpredictable with people and I do not trust her with children. She is fine if we accept people into the yard and just stays back to look them over before greeting, but if someone enters the yard unaccompanied she sometimes just barks a bit, sometimes is more jumping up and barking in their faces. Kids she can stare at and sometimes jump up at even on a leash. She has good training focus (she clicker-trained for eye contact really fast and is totally focussed at group training classes - we do retrieve, wait and recall loose amongst a changing group of 10 mixed dogs no problem) so I have been distracting her with commands and exercises when kids come along and it has worked well, but any advice on predicting her behaviour better? I did not like the speed at which the nip happened - it caused a blood-blister but the guy was very nice about it because she was a puppy. She is tall and 29 kgs now and I think he would be less forgiving. I especially don’t like the attitude to small children but we can’t easily desensitise her with none at home - how do you ask someone if you can use their kid as a guinea-pig?!
- When I took her to the vet for her jabs last month she wouldn’t go near him and was guarding/staring - I gave her to the veterinary nurse and left the room and she was fine - they jabbed her, weighed her, listened to her heart etc without needing a muzzle though I told them she was muzzle-trained and to use one if they wanted. The vet was happy enough with this solution but is there’s a way you can train Dobermans turn off the guarding behaviour in veterinary or similar situations? And is this closer relationship with me than I expected going to be a problem if her owner decides he does wants her after all? She has bonded with us, and she is her owner’s first dog bar a Labrador when he was a young kid.
- we spent effort introducing her to the horses and she is excellent with them and cows, avoiding them quietly and coming out riding with the horse sometimes. Sheep are a different matter! We haven’t let an incident happen but she is way too keen. If they are still or come over she sniffs them and does nothing but if they run she would chase given a chance. Any ideas how to control this? Our other dogs are all 100% with stock so she is getting no encouragement. We are surrounded by farms so this is important.
- she is pleasingly sociable with other dogs if they are polite - at training she slam-dunked an aggressive young dog that got loose off his longline and went straight for her with his teeth out. She got him on the ground with lots of fangs and barking but no contact and he ran away - the trainer shrugged it off as a completely reasonable reaction to a stranger rushing up yelling at her and commented on her self-control. However, she is horrified by the little Maltipoos and things that meet and greet by being over-friendly and waving their feet in her face. My other dogs are unimpressed by this but she is horrified and air-snaps and retreats behind me. Ditto very young puppies who are OTT - she is a bit horrified on a leash, better off a leash. Do Dobermans have a bigger sense of personal space than other breeds / are more stand-offish? She is good at the moment with other dogs and I want that to continue, not to muck it up by getting a situation wrong. Also, my trainer says entire young bitches can be more flighty than neutered bitches (she has had one season) - is this your experience and does it settle down? I have only had rescue dogs, already neutered.
Sorry this is such a long post but I feel a bit cut loose with this dog and you all seem to know the breed well. For what it is worth she is I cropped, undocked, and likes to cuddle except when she is stealing shoes and rough-housing with her feral dog sister. Then she is like a cross between a kangaroo and a crocodile! I am grateful for any advice you can offer on getting it right so, whatever happens, she has the best chance of a good future.