Awww, good people will still love on him. I'd be really proactive about educating people about the breed and how Dobies are actually amazing companions, not some evil devil dog.

I'd love on him all day. <3

Yeah, thats what I try to do. He adores people, probably a bit too much as he gets really over-excited whenever someone gives him attention. He welcomes anyone into the house, whether he knows them or not, by insane zoomie, boisterous, waggy behaviours. He'd be a crap guard dog in that respect :P I mean, he will bark at the door, doing his 'serious' bark whenever he hears someone outside, like he's saying 'fuck offffff!!!!' But as soon as said person is in the house he's all like 'OMG I LOVE YOU!!!!!!!!!!!'

Problem is that people don't seem to understand that he's a puppy, still. Because he's big, they don't give him the same freedom they give a smaller pup of the same age. If a small pup is doing something like jumping up to lick you, or playing tug with their leash, or mouthing your hands, people think 'aaaaw, isn't that adorable?!' But when a dobe pup does it, they think 'OMG OUT OF CONTROL DANGEROUS DOG!!!!'

I've had people want to introduce their kids to him, and he is cool with kids, but I always tell them 'look, he's big, and he's a puppy, so he doesn't know his own strength and he'd never intend to hurt anyone, but he could so easily knock a little kid down by being over-excited' and they still don't move their kids away! I want him to get used to being around kids, but some parents just don't seem to use their brains.
I mean, he will mouth hands sometimes when he's playing, no teeth, no pressure, just mouth around wrist, and I always tell parents this, as I have nightmares about one of them going OMG HE BIT MY CHILD!!!!!
You just can't be too careful. Especially with his breed, he's always going to be the one getting blamed.

True, people don't realize these dogs are BIG puppies.

It's good you're a knowledgeable owner, he will have a good life with you.

lol little balls. xD

And I agree about the puppy thing. x_x People do NOT realize it one bit.

The most tragic bit ever is when people don't bother to train at the puppy stage, and the dog ends up paying the price.

I've had a few dogs in my life, and though I'm only 21, I know how to train a dog using positive reinforcement. It's something I was taught by my father.

I had a friend whose family adopted the oldest daughter's dog after she got sick and tired of it.

It was the CUTEST thing, smart as a whip. A little mix breed. I went over there and played with him now and then, even tried to train him because those idiots had no clue how to do anything and they were too lazy to learn. They laughed at me while I was trying to train him.

A couple weeks later, he got loose. He was hit by a car and killed because he wouldn't come back on command.

:/ Not so funny anymore.

I really thought I was so prepared for anything a puppy could throw at me, I'd researched for years, I was so mentally prepared it was unreal.
But then when he actually came, I quickly started to realise that no amount of research on earth could have prepared me.

Just the getting up every 2 hours at night to toilet him, then having him cry for the next two hours because he didn't want to sleep in his crate, so staying up with him just so he'd be quiet and the neighbours wouldn't complain, and doing this for days on end with no sleep......I went a little nuts.
Then add being seriously sleep deprived to having a puppy that is constantly biting on you, every part he can reach, and doesn't respond to any of the 'traditional' methods of stopping this, and you begin to wonder what the hell you've gone and done.
I remember my lowest point where I was sitting on the stairs in my dressing gown at some ungodly hour like 4:00am after letting him out for his wee, and listening to him scream in his crate and being so worried the neighbours were going to kick off, but knowing I couldn't go and let him out of his crate because I didn't want him to learn that that 'worked', and just bawling my eyes out about it all.
The sleep deprivation was the worst bit, I think I could have coped with everything else better if I'd been sleeping enough.

Fortunately for us, he did get used to the crate within about a week, and began sleeping well, and willingly going back there after toilet breaks and settling down. Still took him to about 5 months of age to stop the puppy biting, though. That was just.......I can't even explain it.
You get this puppy thinking you've got something you can love on and pet and have sit on your lap and cuddle with, at least some of the time. And all you really have is this animal that is obsessed with biting you, that you can't even pet without being bitten, that you can't have on your lap because it gets too excited and starts BITING, just a little furry alligator that will go for your hands, and if you move them out of the way, will start on your feet, and if you pull them up out of the way, will jump up and bite you on the leg, or anywhere it can reach. Endlessly. For hours. Then it turned into days. Then months.

Im surprised I remained sane. I really am.

The only thing that kept me going was thinking 'it will get better'.
And it did. But I really don't think I'd willingly take on another young puppy again. And I try now to put other people off getting them, because they're actually not a lot of fun most of the time! Give me a dog that is at LEAST 6 months - 1year in the future! I've done the puppy thing now, had that experience, don't want it again :P

On the up side, he clicker trained like a pro, picked up commands SO fast and was always a brilliant eater.

Its so sad that people just don't put the work into puppies, they see a well behaved adult dog and they think 'I want one of those' without realising that the dog wasn't born that way, it had to have hours of work put in to become that well behaved. I don't know why people get dogs if they're not prepared to train them. That was one of the things I was really looking forward to with Dres.

Augh the screaming puppy stage. ;-; DKFNDJSKFKDS

I don't remember that happening with our Min-Pin, but oh my God our JRT would just CRY AND CRY AND CRY for WEEKS. It would make me cry, I was only about 14 at the time and I just felt so bad, but my mother insisted I not indulge him.

Turned out it didn't do any good because for the next 8 years her destroyed every type of crate and cage under the sun, chewed through walls and doors and floors (I am not even kidding) because he had chronic separation anxiety-- be SO thankful that didn't happen to you. He had to be medicated and couldn't be left alone so my grandma had to watch him all day. We even lost him a few times when he broke out through windows. (Oh, yeah, he actually went through a glass window once. ;-;) FINALLY in his old age he stopped that. He's about 9 years now. He also was TERRIFIED of thunderstorms and fireworks, gunshots, etc. He'd shake and drool puddles.

It's never as adorable and fun as TV makes it look. The biting-- that I can forgive. It's the rest that's a chore. Teaching them to go outside and pee and all. ;-; I wish puppies came with a label that was like: AKIN TO A HUMAN INFANT or something. People might think a little harder.

Those clickers are super neat, never worked for our dogs though. We tried them but they were all DURR HURR CLICK. They responded really well to verbal commands and hand signals.

His mouth would bleed from chewing.

And one time we had to leave him overnight at the vet and he's got a really huge obvious scar on his nose because he was SHOVING HIS FACE THROUGH THE DOOR.

This is why I do NOT recommend JRTs to people because they are just too darn smart and stubborn. ._.

That sounds like a nightmare :( I was lucky with Dres because dobes are prone to separation anxiety as a breed, and I was prepared for the chance of it happening, but he's actually really good on his own.
He obviously does much prefer to be with people, like if you're in one room, he HAS to be in that room with you (even the toilet, I can't ever take a piss alone now), even if there are far more interesting things happening in the next room, it doesn't matter because he wants to be where you are.
Like he'll be in the garden, playing madly with a toy or something, really having fun, and I'll just calmly get up to walk indoors, and he's like 'WHERE ARE YOU GOING? I MUST COME TOO!' and drop everything.

I think we possibly avoided some of the separation anxiety stuff because we got him used to us going out from day 2, really. We could leave him up to 2 hours at the very start, thats as long as he could hold his wee in. So we'd pop out for an hour, to go to the shops or something, and do this regularly. He kinda learned pretty quick that we always came back. We didn't really have a choice, either; we had to go grocery shopping, we couldn't take him with us, so he just had to deal with it.
But I don't know how I'd have dealt with it if he were how you described your JRT. I'd have just had to rip my hair out in stress!
Dres did hate the crate for the first week or so. He'd cry and howl and scrabble at the door. I was a bit worried in those early days that he'd never take to it. But I found that if I went and sat next to the crate and stroked him, he'd calm down. It wasn't the crate he hated so much as the distance between us. So as long as I sat there and stroked him, and fed him bits of chicken through the bars, he was all cool.
Then we began actually feeding him his meals in the crate, and he would run in there when he heard the food bowl because he knew that was where food was given. I found that really helped with making him happy about the whole crate thing.

But I suppose JRTs are tenacious, and they are bred to be so, so they don't like to give up! I have heard of other dogs like that, though. Im just so glad I didn't end up with one!

Ah, that's good then. You're lucky, he sounds like a really good dog from what all I read here and on Facebook! :D

But yeah no... my mother was at her wit's end. He destroyed so many things. She wanted to get rid of him for a while there, but then realized no one would take him and also that he was MY dog, so we stuck it out. Like I said, he just kind of grew out of it... so that's good. He's well behaved now.

I think the sticky dog thing is just kind of what all dogs who really love their owners have. All our current dogs are the same way-- afraid they're going to miss something by not being with you. xD

"Have noticed recently, though, people beginning to give us unfriendly looks on our walks, which never used to happen. I think its probably because he's past the 'cute' puppy stage now and is actually looking like a proper Doberman, and people are just letting their prejudice show. Doesn't really bother me, but people have in the past always been so nice about him, and so willing to come over and cuddle him, that its gonna be sad if people stop doing that, because he loves people :("

Saw the same with my Akita. Never got any better for us, even though he's a big baby.
Hopefully your experience will be different. It's a bummer.

In regards to the dirty looks, I have a friend who ended up living with a boxer-AmStaff mix because he belonged to her then-boyfirend-now-husband. He is the sweetest dog in the world and his owner love him to bits. But she has actually had people crossing the street to avoid her when she takes him on walks. Which I think is hilarious when I think about the picture she posted online once of this same dog in a pink sweater.

Raising puppies is always a challenge but so rewarding when you see the results of your efforts. It's sad people are warely of him now. I love Dobermans, a friend of mine had an awesome one when I was a kid. There's a nice one who walks around town as well. He has a little tail that curls over his back that I find oddly amusing.