A tale of two dogs or two dogs no tails.

I'm not going to go into the whole tail docking and ear cropping debate, just now. Rather I am going to look at the two dogs that made me want to own a Doberman. The first, Stefan, belonged to my parents long before I was born. My childhood memories are packed with the stories that my mother and father used to tell, of this gentle but cunning hound. Among my favourites was the story of how Stefan used to stalk the Milkman as he did his rounds. Every time the Milkman left cream or yogurt on someones doorstep, Stefan crept up and stole it. This carried on for several weeks, and so skilled was Stefan in his larceny that the Milkman never caught him in the act. Now if you've never owned a Doberman then you'll find it hard to credit any dog with the intelligence to hide in bushes or crawl undetected behind dustbins. However if you have owned a Doberman then you will already be well aware of their Zen like dedication to deception. Needless to say, my parents had no idea what Stefan was doing. That was until one day when Stefan had been particularly gluttonous, and the Milkman was able to follow the trail of cream all the way back to my parents door. The Milkman took great delight in presenting my father with an extremely large bill.

I never knew Stefan, I think that in the end my parents gave him away; my father particularly was fed up of owning a dog that regularly out smarted him, and considering that at the time of owning Stefan my father had just completed a degree from the London School of Economics, you get an idea of how clever that dog really was. Anyway as a child of the seventies I grew up with my parents stories of Stefan, and also indulged in my pleasure for corny horror films, which I am unashamed to admit I devoured with relish. It was while watching one of these horrors that I came across the second significant Doberman in my life - Zoltan hound of Dracula. I remember not being scared, just struck by the elegant agility of this wonderful creature.

Why these two dogs, which I never met, had such an effect on me, I don't really know. But they planted a seed of desire in me, to own a Doberman of my own, something which I fulfilled 3 years ago - But more of that later.