Having shared the tragedy of the Titanic earlier today, we’re just loaded with cheerful posts as we also note that today, April 15th, is Tax Day. But Doberman owners, this is kinda sorta your day!

Herr Karl Friedrich Louis Dobermann was a 19th century tax collector who needed a dog to have his back, so to speak. The breeds that went into the making of Dobermann’s new breed is lost to us since Karl didn’t keep records, but as a dogcatcher for the state of Thuringia, Germany, he had his pick. It’s widely believed that Rottweilers, Great Danes, Manchester Terrier, German Short Haired Pointers and German Pinschers were part of the ancestry, but Karl was largely concerned with character over appearance; he wanted a brave, loyal, and smart breed with a well developed instinct to protect him from people irritated with the whole tax collection thing. From the get-go, his dogs were known as “Dobermann’s Hunde,” but after Dobermann’s death in 1894, the Germans renamed the breed Dobermann-pinscher in his honor.