The question behind the question is usually about the 11 month old dog in front of you. The puppy was easy. The yearling is 30 kg of leg and noise, and there are children in the house.
So you have started wondering whether you chose the wrong breed. You probably did not, and the real answer is more useful than reassurance anyway.
The honest answer
Families do live well with dobermans. They are built to work close to a person, and that closeness is a genuine advantage in a busy house. A dog who wants to know where you are is easy to include in a day that already has 4 people in it.
The same closeness is the hard part. Dobermans are a sensitive breed, and a sensitive dog notices tension in a room and reacts to it. Harsh handling does not make a dog like this steadier, and the effect does not wear off either.
The other half is physical. A dog this size and this fast needs somewhere to put their body every day. A garden on its own does not provide that, and neither does a second lap of the same street.
What adolescence does to this breed
Around the onset of adolescence, dogs respond less to the cues of the person who raised them. That responsiveness returns later in the stage. It is development, not a verdict on the puppy you raised or on the adult they are becoming.
With a breed that is both sensitive and large, the drop reads as something more alarming than it is. A 12 month old doberman who stops coming back is not a 12 week old puppy doing the same thing. The size has arrived before the training has, and that gap is the whole problem.
The 3 things that decide it
Exercise that settles rather than revs. Fast, repetitive running can raise arousal instead of lowering it, and an athletic breed feels that. Build the day around sniffing walks, chewing and short settle practice, and treat the zoomies as a sign your dog needs rest rather than more.
Handling that pays rather than punishes. Reward-based methods are what the veterinary behaviour guidance recommends, and survey work associates them with higher reported responsiveness and fewer reported problem behaviours. A sensitive dog working for you is worth 10 of them working to avoid a correction.
A house the children keep too. Decide now which behaviours are never on the table, and teach the children to stand still and fold their arms instead of running away. Give your dog a spot nobody bothers them on. Every adolescent dog needs one place that is theirs.
Why not a prong collar
These are the tools most often sold to owners of big, strong, determined dogs. Aversive training methods are associated with worse welfare outcomes and no training advantage. Dogs trained with them show more stress-related behaviour than dogs trained with rewards.
Punishment-based approaches are also associated with fear, avoidance and defensive aggression. On a dog this size, in a house with children in it, that is not a trade-off worth taking.
This week
Pick the one behaviour that costs your family the most, and work on that alone for 2 weeks. Four problems at once gets you 4 half-trained skills.
Put a mat in the room you sit in, 6 to 8 feet from your chair, and pay your dog for lying on it. Relaxation is trained as a behaviour in its own right.
Give your dog 1 sniffing walk a day with no agenda, on a long line if you need the distance.
Hand out a chew in the evening, on the mat, so the day ends somewhere quiet rather than in a second wind.
Keep the criteria small enough that your dog can meet it 4 times out of 5, and stop each session while they are still winning.
Safety note
Book a veterinary examination before you train anything if the behaviour arrived over days rather than weeks. Sudden behaviour change warrants one, and pain frequently presents as a change in behaviour rather than as obvious lameness. Get help now if your dog has growled at, snapped at or bitten anybody, including a child in your own house. Speak to a qualified behaviour professional who works with reward-based methods, and keep dogs and small children apart in the meantime.
What to expect
Nobody can promise you a calm adult doberman, and anybody who does is selling something. What you can do is make sure the skills are in place before the stage ends. Responsiveness returns onto whatever your dog has been practising.
The families who do well with this breed describe the same shape. A loud first year, a dog who is finally 2 years old, and a house that runs itself again.
If the jumping, the pulling and the ignoring are all happening at once, the Assessment will name the pattern underneath. It is free, takes about 3 minutes, and asks for no email address.
Today's version, in one line: put the mat down 6 feet from your chair, and pay your dog for 3 minutes on it before dinner.