I adore a Dobie, I love how quietly intelligent they are. From a health perspective, they do have more issues than a pittie. I highly recommend a standard color like Black and Tan or red, in my time in vet med we definitely saw increased health issues in the more rare coat colors like blue and fawn- BIG issues. I’ve seen devastating cancer in Dobies as young as 18 months- and I’ve rarely seen them live past 10-11. That’s not to make you sad, that’s to help you prepare mentally, and to maybe encourage you to definitely get pet insurance or have a good waiting bank fund in case you need it. They are deep-chested, so watch how you feed/water to prevent bloat. Prevent gulping as much as you can, and don’t feed right before or after heavy exercise, slow-feed bowls, etc.

We recently did an Embark breed test on our pittie and found out that he’s purebred- I can’t recommend it enough, the purebred or breed + health tests for a lot of conditions, many of them Dobie related, like Von Willebrands. For $135, the test really seemed helpful for identifying several of the breed-related heavy hitting genetic diseases. We tend towards mutts in our family, but I highly recommend testing for the genetic conditions they can test for at this time in anything purebred, but Dobies especially.