yes i did get him from craiglist my vet said its a puppy thing. (whatever that means) and 7 weeks is about a week too early i thought as well but i guess the breeders didnt care about that law out here in california not sure what exactly the law is on this one. i doesnt spend much time in the sun at all he's an indoor dog he goes outside to go "do his business" and when he wants to play but usually he stays inside.
Weird...sometimes I go years without running into the question of puppy coats changing colors and then it comes up 5 or 6 times on DT in three months.
I sound like a broken record. Puppies change coats about three times befor they are a year old. Dobe puppies with their short hair and single coats show it more than some puppies do.
A lot of black puppies if they weren't particularly well nourished at very young ages (or their mother wasn't) will have coats that aren't as slick and smooth as puppies coats on Dobes usually are--so the color tends to look rusty on black puppies (it's because the cuticle of the hair shaft is raised a little--reflects light differently) and tends to look sort of bleached on red puppies.
Your vet is right--it's fairly normal even on well cared for puppies who are reaching the point of the first coat change to see what looks like a color change. He's probably shedding out the very first of the puppy coats. In a couple of months the coat change should be complete and he'll look solidly black again and the coat texture should be smoother. And black puppies who spend a lot of time in the sun can and some do bleach a little just as some red dogs do which will also give a rusty cast to the coat.
Adult Dobermans should not have soft smooth coats but puppies do. Adults should have a smooth "hard" coat which feels a little harsh.
And some black Dobes even as adults have a slight "red" cast. One of my champion males did--and in certain lights it often looked like he had dark mahogany highlights. A lot of people were sure it was because he carried red as a recessive--which was a nice theory but that particular dog was dominant black carrying neither red nor dilution.
I wonder how people come to that decision, that breeding puppies = making a quick buck? How do they make it okay in their heads? It really just baffles me.
