“Alas, the breed is short-lived - the only draw back “
They didn’t use to be.
In the late 90s, two particular, very popular bloodlines became *the* ‘in sires’ and DCM became endemic.
One ‘dog of death’ is syill being bred via ‘pupsicles’ despite the fact that he was homozygous for DCM and died of it.
The other two dogs are still siring pups, post mortem.
My last Dobermann Arthur, lived to be 14 and was never sick a day in his life.
His best buddy Merlin died 2 years before him and she was at least 4 when I got her and she lived another 8 or 9 years, too.
Hypothyroidism is now a given in the breed and you really should read Dr Jean Dodds book about the epidemic.
http://www.itsfortheanimals.com/HEMOPET.HTM
If you haven’t already, please have your dog tested for hypothyroidism and DCM.
http://www.vetgen.com/canine-dob_panel_testing.html
Sadly, it’s up to those of us who love the breed *without* the titles who will have to fight to return them to their normal expected life spans.
It’s sad that dogs - especially larger breeds - don’t live long. Mostly because of exactly this issue.
Since our dogs tend to live maybe beyond just 10 years, show people (in particular) are in a rush to breed what they have (especially females). Regardless of what may be known about their genetic background, and without knowledge that the dog will have the condition in question himself. So our dogs are bred at the age of 2 or even less, and when those dogs become 6, they develop a bad condition. Now it’s KNOWN that those dogs are bad, but it’s already in the gene pool Even if they had the ethics to stop breeding the dogs who are sick, they’ve already started, so the genetic downturn continues.
At least horses and others live so much longer (even if they can be bred very early) that we can find out these problems faster. But really, any animal with a questionable genetic inheritance should not be bred.