Reading Dobermans

I have a private theory as to why people who don't have much experience of Dobermans find them as intimidating as they do. Although this theory is based on my own observations, I hope it isn't purely a 'common sense' explanation.

The most obvious reason why people find Dobermans frightening, is founded on the stereotypical image of them as 'devil dogs', but on a subtler level I think that Doberman body language is different from that of other dogs. This isn't helped by the fact that most Dobermans that people encounter have had their tail and ears cosmetically altered; dogs use these appendages to communicate with both other dogs and people. I think it is telling that before actually owning a Doberman I found it easier to read the body language of a wolf than I did that of a Doberman. In Britain it is illegal to crop the ears of any dog, but tail docking is still prevalent. I am not going to comment on this beyond saying that although I plan to have more Dobermans in the future, I will never own another dock tailed dog as long as I live. Black's veterinary dictionary, on its entry on tail docking, highlights the fact that tail docked dogs often have problems communicating their intentions to other dogs, this often results in fights.

But surgery inflicted changes aside, Dobermans do not have particularly expressive faces. Now I'm sure that most Doberman owners would be up in arms at that statement, but think back to your experiences with your first Doberman. I've already mentioned on this Blog the fact that when we got Fudge, I felt that I was trying as hard to learn to speak Doberman as she was trying to learn human. If you compare a Dobermans features to that of a really expressive dog like a Collie, I think you'll get my point. A happy Doberman doesn't look all that different to a sad Doberman, unless you know the breed well and know to look for the almost imperceptible droop in the ears. It is this inscrutable nature of Dobermans that I think can unsettle people who don't have much experience of the breed. When you combined this with the Doberman habit of unblinkingly staring directly at strangers, behaviour that is extremely threatening in other dog breeds, you can understand why the uninitiated tend to be a bit nervous around them.

In the brilliant 'Man meets Dog', the ethologist Konrad Lorenz discusses the fact that bears are extremely dangerous animals to study and work with, mainly because they have very few muscles in their face, so that the people working with them have no facial clues as to whether a bear is becoming upset or aggressive. I would argue that the impassive face of a Doberman has a similar ursine quality, which only allows those that are really familiar with the breed to read their thoughts.