When you arrive to pickup your puppy they will be freshly bathed and wearing a collar with our tag on them. Please leave this collar on them until at least you have acquired your own tag. This tag will help the dog get reunited with you should they go missing before you have a chance to get your own tag. We recommend bringing your own collar, please ask us what size collar you need, and putting that collar on beside our collar and using that collar without the tag to affix any leashes to so that if they break off they still have their ID. Our puppies are also micro chipped to our kennel as a backup. We will NOT transfer these microchips but we will keep the information provided by the new owners on file and contact you if we are contacted about your dog being found. If we cannot get a hold of you we will step in and pickup the dog and hold them while we try to locate you. This is very important to prevent the dog being euthanized, stolen, or turned over to a rescue without your knowledge as well as to keep the terms of your contract with the kennel. New owners are welcome AND encouraged to place their own chip as well if they so desire. Generally the chip with the newest information will be called first. We offer this service free, our number will never change, and we invite you to update your information with us should it change so that we can always contact you if the dog is found. We will never sell your contact information or use it for sales solicitations.

Please note that whoever holds the dog on the way home is going to end up being the likely favorite person. So the person whose dog it is going to be should be the one holding the dog. If they cannot hold the dog then placing the dog in a travel crate is the best way to avoid this. We recommend that you place the dog in a travel crate, simply because a loose puppy is a very big risk to cause an accident. If there is an accident a lose puppy is much more likely to be hurt or thrown from the vehicle. We take our puppies on short car rides starting at 6 weeks old and they should be fairly used to a 30 minute car ride but they may become restless on longer rides. We recommend bringing toys and chews to occupy your puppy and stop any screaming or whining. You should also understand that if you dog is under 4 months old they are not fully housebroken and may have an accident on longer rides. Puppies may also get carsick on longer rides. Bringing extra bedding is highly recommended.

For the first 24  hours up to 2 weeks your dog will likely trick you into believing they are a super mellow calm dog.  Unless you have taken a retired dog from us this is very likely not the case. Most working breeds go into what we call “I have been dognapped” stage. They are very withdrawn, quiet, and often low energy during the dognapped stage. This is a normal reaction but you should not expect it to last. Once they get comfortable their true personality will come out and they will begin to be a normal high energy working animal. We recommend not working on any serious training during this time and just let the dog get used to its new surroundings, new companions, and new routine.

Puppies have very little ability to hold their bladders or bowels. You should not bring an 8 week old puppy home and expect they will be housebroken in short order. It can take 4-6 months for a puppy to be reliably house broken. You will have the most success housebreaking your puppy if you use a crate to train them. This crate needs to be the right size or you will end up training them to go to the bathroom in their crate. It must only be just big enough for the puppy to stand without touching the roof and turn around. Any additional room will lead to your puppy deciding to go to the bathroom in their crate more quickly. Your puppy at 8 weeks old can only go about 3-4 hours max without a bathroom break. Take your puppy out before and after play sessions, directly after meals, and any time they start acting real interested in sniffing around the floor. You need to make going outside the best thing every with treats and praise after outside pottying but you should NOT punish your puppy if they go to the bathroom where they are not supposed to. They are not doing it out of malice or forethought. Puppies have very little “notice” they have to go and will immediately seek to go when they get the urge. Punishing your puppy for this can lead to a break down in your bond and will set back potty training. If you have to leave your puppy for long periods we recommend not leaving them in a crate. Setting up an area with a doggie playpen that is easy for your to clean will help avoid your dog soiling themselves and having to stand or lay in it. If the dog is left in a crate with their own excrement for long periods of time they will lose the inhibition dogs naturally have to avoid pottying where they sleep and at that point pottying training them will become nearly impossible.

Many years ago, the first breeder who did not cull the one single puppy of their purebred Doberman litter that was born the wrong color probably did not know that this tiny puppy would end up shattering the entire breed. This unplanned color ended up splitting the genetics of a breed that was already in a state of low genetic diversity, sentencing thousands of dogs to be considered inferior because at some point in their pedigree they were related to the mother of this litter.  They probably also did not suspect that by using the most bias of “testing” their breed club would decide that this unwanted color was worthless and dangerous. If they did they may have done, as many a breeder had done before them, culled that puppy before she was even dry.

The tale spun by the DPCA is that the white Doberman is a genetic horror, full of health issues and with a temperament that made them unpredictable and dangerous. The same bowl of shit that has been said about the entire breed by many uneducated people. But to bolster this claim the breed club says they “did testing” and that’s how they came to this conclusion. They screamed from the roof tops this garbage to the point that it is now treated as gospel by many a layman and professional alike. The testing done by the DPCA however was sickening.

Starting with calling the poor single female puppy a mutant. Their “research” determining that they were unhealthy fear biters was to acquire siblings, bred the closely related dogs together repeatedly purely to reproduce the color, and raise them in kennel environments. Anyone with a brain cell can see that this would produce dog’s inferior in health and temperament. Anyone that has ever dealt with a kennel raised dog knows that ANY breed of dog raised this way tends to have serious socialization issues. No true breeder, interested in the health and well-being of the breed, would ever have suggested breeding brothers, sisters, and mothers in the way DPCA did to reproduce the whites they used for their determinations. They went into the “testing” with a predisposed hatred of the white coloration that tinted their breeding practices in these test but also the results to fit their narrative of “White Are Bad”.

But not only did they martyr the white/albino coloration they also martyred an entire genetic line that has resulted in the loss of almost 30% of the Doberman genetic available for their “approved” list of breeding dogs regardless of either the coloring of the dog, their genetic health, or they’re not even carrying the gene to reproduce the white coloration they hate. It is now possible to genetically screen a Doberman to prove they do not carry the white gene. But even with this advancement, there is no way off the dreaded “Z” list for any dog that finds itself on it by virtue of having a tiny distance relation to the mother of the first registered white Doberman. A Doberman can win a grand championship multiple times, have every title the AKC offers, be genetically perfect, have amazing OFA results, and rescue babies from fires but if it was born on the DPCA’s Schillinger’s List of hatred known as the Z list as far as the DPCA is concerned it is a worthless dog that should never be bred.

We do not subscribe to DPCA’s blind hatred. We want the genetic diversity of our breed to improve. The current inbreeding coefficient of the breed is abhorrent and there is a direct correlation between this coefficient and the lifespan of the Doberman. Carving a massive number of dogs out of the gene pool is not an acceptable reaction if preserving the life and health of the breed is truly your goal. We do not share the “white/albino Doberman is a dangerous horrible unhealthy monster” idealism the DPCA puts out there. We will not even get into the fact that whites have been born OUTSIDE of the Z list long before and long after the first white female was registered by the AKC.

A white/albino Doberman does have drawbacks in that they are more prone to sunburn which can result in a higher-than-normal chance of cancer. There is no way to make this not true but there are ways to mitigate the risk by being aware it exists. ALL white dogs carry a higher risk of sunburn and cancer compared to nonwhite dogs. This is not limited to the Doberman. Using sunblock and limiting outdoor time when it is extremely sunny is an easy way to reduce this risk significantly. Their blue eyes are sensitive to bright sunlight, the same as any other blue eye creature. No one says we should stop breeding blue eyed dogs, people, or cats because of this. As for the temperament claims, when bred with the same care for temperament and raised with correct socialization I have never found the white/albino Doberman to be more aggressive, more prone to fear biting, or to have an unstable temperament which is why I still work with them using the same common-sense practices as one would use with any other Doberman.

If you do not agree with us, we understand, we can agree to disagree.

One of the things many puppy buyers forgo when vetting a potential purchase is to inquire exactly how a breeder raises the puppy they are wanting to bring home. It is very rare when we are asked this question, in fact, in 15 years we have been asked it 3 times exactly. The fact is how your puppy is raised sets up your dog for the rest of its life. The first 8 weeks of a puppies life is fundamentally important to their overall mental stability. Your breeder has 1344 hours from birth till 8 weeks old to set your dog up for success or failure later in life. Failure to properly socialize a puppy in the crucial 3-12 weeks socialization period can lead to many problems later on in life.

We handle our puppies from the day they are born. For the first 2 weeks puppies are deaf and blind. Mom during this time will want a quiet area for her litter away from the other dogs and with as little interruption as possible.  From birth to three weeks old they spent most of their time eating and sleeping. Around three weeks of age they begin to be able to see, hear, and become mobile. During their first 3 weeks they will have been checked over carefully twice daily by us, getting used to our scent and hands as we ensure they are healthy and well fed. In larger litters or with moms struggling to produce enough milk we may take a few puppies from mom for a while to bottle feed and then return them. We will swap out which puppies are taken each time so everyone is getting an equal change at mother’s milk and formula.

As their eyes and ears open and the become mobile the critical period of socialization begins. Outside stimuli will begin to be noticed and reacted to by the puppies. From this point on careful safe exposure to as much as possible is important. This is the time when your puppy will begin to develop and expand his or her personality. It is important to introduce as much of normal life as one can during this period so that a puppy can be well exposed to normal household things before they reach their first fear period at around 8 weeks of age.

When our puppies are 4 weeks old they begin to be pulled from mom each day as a group and exposed to a variety of new sights, smells, and sounds. Things like bells, crinkly mats, cats, running water, flushing toilets, rattly toys, keys, and so on. For most of these sessions the puppies are allowed to explore freely and climb into the lap of their tenders and receive requested interaction. We will interact with the toys, make noise, but we want the puppies to engage with us and the toys on their own. This allows us to better access the personalities of the puppies.

Around 6 weeks of age the puppies will have some closely supervised outdoor time. They will also begin to be separated from their litter mates and given one on one time. This is the time when each puppy will get its color collar. They will be exposed to leashes, crating, and more interactive activities like climbing, tunnels, jumping, pushing through interference, and different walking surfaces. This is when we introduce puppies to our puppy obstacle course which will change a little each day allowing them.

At 7 weeks of age puppies will be taken to a completely new environment one by one and given a Volhard Puppy Aptitude Test. Each puppies test will be videoed. We will also begin to introduce them to car rides and they will be exposed more and more to crate training, leash training, and other dogs. We will begin the process of house breaking to make their transitions easier.

Our puppies begin to go home at 8 weeks old. Puppies enrolled in our Service Dog socialization program will stay an either 4-8 weeks to prepare them more for their future jobs. They will be introduced to vests and begin the early parts of access training introducing them to new sights and sounds outside of their home environment.