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The odds are huge that it wasn’t “age”.
Most of mine lived into their teens.

Dilated cardiomopathy has become rampant in the breed in the last 20 years due to a number of death-gene carrying “big show winners” being used heavily in breeding programs.

There is now a test to determine if a Dobe is carrying that gene.

-Good- breeders are testing for it and NOT breeding dogs who have it.

Don’t let bad breeders put you off of owning the greatest dogs in the world.

The Dobermann was -never- meant to be a “big breed”.
The standard calls for males to be _no more than 28”_ at the withers.
That is a medium sized dog.

As with everything else, morons decided that “bigger is better” and wrecked them by making them “monstrous”.

Find a good breeder who _sticks to the standard and does all health testing_ and you can again have a healed heart.

Start with breeders who are importing European Dobes.

They haven’t wrecked them.

I understand your the agony of your loss all too well but for myself, putting my head up to the gun of potential heartache is preferable to not having them.

There are part of me and if I haven’t got at least one, I’m not really alive.

Kipling knew me well:

The Power of the Dog
by
Rudyard Kipling

There is sorrow enough in the natural way
From men and women to fill our day;
And when we are certain of sorrow in store,
Why do we always arrange for more?
Brothers and sisters, I bid you beware
Of giving your heart to a dog to tear.

Buy a pup and your money will buy
Love unflinching that cannot lie—
Perfect passsion and worship fed
By a kick in the ribs or a pat on the head.
Nevertheless it is hardly fair
To risk your heart to a dog to tear.

When the fourteen years which Nature permits
Are closing in asthma, or tumour, or fits,
And the vet’s unspoken prescription runs
To lethal chambers or loaded guns,
Then you will find—it’s your own affair—
But ... you’ve given your heart to a dog to tear.

When the body that lived at your single will,
With its whimper of welcome, is stilled (how still!)
When the spirit that answered your every mood
Is gone—wherever it goes—for good,
You will discover how much you care,
And will give your heart to a dog to tear.

We’ve sorrow enough in the natural way,
When it comes to burying Christian clay.
Our loves are not given, but only lent,
At compound interest of cent per cent.
Though it is not always the case, I believe,
That the longer we’ve kept ‘em, the more do we grieve:
For, when debts are payable, right or wrong,
A short-term loan is as bad as a long—
So why in—Heaven (before we are there)
Should we give our hearts to a dog to tear?