I didn't read through the topic (SORRY!) but I've had 4 Dobies in my life. The first one died at 10 (I was 2 lol) of apparent old age. He had cancer at some point, but it was in his toe (or something like that.) Anyhow, cancer isn't really a genetic risk to them only. The second one was the biggest problem, when she was 5 she developed "Wobbler's Disease." It caused severe ataxia in the back end. I don't know if it's genetic, but I do know that it is more common in Dobies than other breeds. She was relatively pain free despite the problem and lived for 4.5 years before we decided that she was in pain and she was unable to tell when she was defecating. Towards the end I had begun doing little agility with her and jumping over things really seemed to help her muscles, but it's still a disease, it still gets worse. We got two pups a little over 9 years ago, same time, NEVER RECOMMEND THAT! Anyhow, one of the two developed an inoperable tumor in his spine 3 years ago. We didn't know what it was and he went through a prednizone treatment which caused him to be completely fine for an entire year. One year to the day later, he came up with the same symptoms and when he didn't get better despite treatments for a lot of different things, a blood test showed abnormal proteins so they X-rayed him and found the tumor. As far as I know, they never biopsied the tumor, so I don't know if it was cancer or not, but he was euthanized that day. The other pup we still have at over 9 years old and he's doing well.

Dobies are good dogs. They have health issues as does every pure breed. However, we love them, I just don't think I'll get another one in the near future. They're only expected to live 10 years, so we've only have one go early and that was a choice, we may have been able to keep him comfortable, but my family has a thing with making animals suffer longer than they should, so I was happy they let him go to a better place.