Geschiedenis – Oorsprong
Korte historie:
De Dobermann is het enige Duitse ras die de naam draagt van zijn originele fokker, Friedrich Louis Dobermann (02.01.1834 – 09.06.1894). Volgens de overlevering was hij een belastinginner, manager van een slachterij en parttime hondenvanger, wettelijk bevoegd om zwerfhonden te vangen. Hij fokte met honden uit deze opvang die vrij scherp waren. De zogenaamde “slagers honden”, welke al een vrij puur ras was in die tijd, speelde een hele belangrijke rol in het ontstaan van het ras de Dobermann. Deze honden waren van een vroeg type Rottweiler, gekruist met een type herdershond die in Thüringen als een zwarte hond met roestrode markeringen bestond. Louis Dobermann fokte met deze kruisingen in de 70-er jaren van het jaar 1800. Op deze wijze ontstond “zijn ras”, niet alleen alerte, maar ook zeer verdedigende werk- en huishonden. Ze werden vaak gebruikt als waak- en politiehonden. Hun veelvuldige inzet in het politiewerk gaf ze de bijnaam “Gendarme hond”. Ze werden gebruikt in de jacht om groot ongedierte onder controle te houden. In deze omstandigheden was het vanzelfsprekend dat de Dobermann officieel werd erkend als een politiehond aan het begin van de 20e eeuw.
Below, source: wikipedia
The Dobermann is a German breed of medium-large working dog of pinscher type. It was originally bred in Thuringia in about 1890 by Louis Dobermann, a tax collector. It has a long muzzle and – ideally – an even and graceful gait. The ears were traditionally cropped and the tail docked, practices which are now illegal in many countries.
The Dobermann is intelligent, alert and tenaciously loyal; it is kept as a guard dog or as a companion animal.
In Canada and the United States it is known as the Doberman Pinscher.
History
Dobermanns were first bred in the 1880s by Karl Friedrich Louis Dobermann, a tax collector who ran a dog pound in Apolda in present-day Thuringia in central Germany. With access to dogs of many breeds, he got the idea to create a breed that would be ideal for protecting him. He set out to breed a new type of dog that would exhibit impressive stamina, strength, and intelligence. Five years after Dobermann’s death, Otto Goeller, one of the earliest breeders, created the National Doberman Pinscher Club and is considered to have perfected the breed, breeding and refining them in the 1890s.
The breed is believed to have been created from several different breeds of dogs that had the characteristics that Dobermann was looking for. The exact ratios of mixing, and even the exact breeds that were used, remain uncertain, although many experts believe that the Dobermann is a combination of several breeds including the Beauceron, German Pinscher, Rottweiler and Weimaraner. The single exception is the documented crossing with the Greyhound and Manchester Terrier. It is also widely believed that the old German Shepherd was the single largest contributor to the Dobermann breed. Philip Greunig’s The Dobermann Pinscher (1939) describes the breed’s early development by Otto Goeller, who helped to establish the breed. The American Kennel Club believes the breeds utilized to develop the Dobermann Pinscher may have included the old shorthaired shepherd, Rottweiler, Black and Tan Terrier and the German Pinscher.
After Dobermann’s death in 1894, the Germans named the breed Dobermann-pinscher in his honor, but a half century later dropped the word ‘pinscher’ on the grounds that this German word for ’terrier’ was no longer appropriate. The British did the same a few years later; now the US and Canada are the only countries who continue to use Pinscher and have dropped an “n” from Dobermann’s surname.
During World War II, the United States Marine Corps adopted the Doberman Pinscher as its official war dog, although the Corps did not exclusively use this breed in the role.
In 2013 a list of breeds by annual number of registrations, based on a survey of member clubs of the Fédération Cynologique Internationale, placed the Dobermann 26th, with 20941 new registrations per year. Statistics compiled by the AKC for 2009 placed the Doberman Pinscher 15th, with 10233 registrations in that year. In the fifteen years from 2009 to 2023 the average number of puppies whelped per year in Germany was approximately 535, representing just over 1% of the average total number of births for all breeds, recorded at slightly more than 77000 per year.