• Did you take formal obedience classes or train yourself. How many classes did you take? Do you still continue to train when not in class?
We do both...we took Duchess to her puppy class then she started obedience and she also moved on to agility...she is a year and 9 months now and we continue to take her once a week to a class just for her enjoyment and keep things fresh in her mind.
• How important/beneficial is obedience training to you for this breed?
This breed LOVES to train! and they look awesome doing it! Which is the reason we take her once a week still to a public class...(she likes to show off lol) I think taking them when they are puppies is also very important...they introduce them to other puppies...and they also introduce them to some "scary" agility equiptment like tunnels and very small jumps to build their confidence.
• Where do you train outside of classes? (backyard, walks, public places)
We train Duchess's at her dog class...also a lot in the living room. We need to start strictly doing training outside in the backyard...we should have done this at an early age! so that she would listen to us and not think the backyard is a "PLAY ZONE ONLY"
• How much time do you spend in a training session? Do you find it easy to train a male or a female? Do you think a doberman is easy to train compared to other breeds?
Training sessions in class are 45 minutes...when they are puppies...the attention span is short..and they are easily distracted as time goes on. When we train in the living room ...it is just short spurts of 10 minutes probably. Dobermans are easy to train...the only thing is that sometimes they can be so smart that they are stubborn...In agility...I noticed a lot of the Dobermans like to atleast one time take off on the owner and just start trotting around the building lol...once they got this out of their system...they would come back and work real hard lol. Dobermans catch on quick! at 6 months Duchess looked smarter than all the older dogs there! Now she can be completely off the leash for healing...sit, stay come...etc...Sometimes when Duchess was younger the smells were wonderful to her and seemed to be the only thing that mattered! lol
• What type of rewards do you use, if any? (food, toy, praise) Do you use any special training aids? (leashes, clickers, etc) What methods of training do you use?
we use a combination of treats and praise...we don't need to use a prong collar when we are specifically training...but if we are out and about...and don't have the time to be training her while we are doing whatever were doing we will need to use it. Like I said at class she no longer needs a leash...but when she was a puppy we were always sure to have our 6ft leash.
• What have the rewards/accomplishments been since you started training your doberman?
No awards...but with Dobes you will always get a lot of compliments! How gorgeous she is...How smart...How attentive...people have told us Duchess would make a great Therapy dog...We still need to get her canine good citizen test.
