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Miniature Pinscher History (or "Damn it! I am not a Minature Doberman.")

The Miniature Pinscher is not a scaled-down, smaller version of anything, especially the much larger Doberman. Both the Doberman and Miniature Pinscher likely descended from the Old German Standard Pinscher, (considered by many to be behind several German breeds) but there the relationship ends. Historians agree that the Miniature Pinscher originated in Germany several centuries ago as an efficient barnyard ratter. In an AKC Gazette column of 1935, Helen Coster stated that in response to her inquiry, the German Kennel Club in Stuttgart, said in their letter to her "the Zwerg or Dwarf Pinscher is a pure German breed from olden times, and that it has nothing to do with the Doberman or the Manchester Terrier." The Club also calls him the "Reh" Pinscher, but this term is only used for a dog of stag-red color, "reh" referring to a small red deer found in German forests years ago.

The Miniature Pinscher has been pictured in old paintings and sculptures that unmistakably place him as a very old breed, but because factual documentation began less than 200 years ago, his actual origins cannot be stated in fact. In 1936 Dr. H. G. Reinchenbach, a German writer, stated that the breed was a cross of the Dachshund and Italian Greyhound. Many historians and those who have researched the background of the breed agree that the ancestors of the Min Pin most likely include a combination of the smaller German smooth-haired Pinschers, the Italian Greyhound and the Smooth Dachshund.

For the sake of those who still argue that the Miniature Pinscher was bred down from the Doberman Pinscher, it was not until the year 1890 that Louis Dobermann, for whom the Doberman Pinscher is named, bred his first real Doberman.

Mr. Dobermann was a German tax collector and dogcatcher. A skilled breeder, he set out to create a medium sized working dog that would accompany and protect him during the day on his travels. He stated a wish to breed "a giant terrier that would look much like the five-pound Reh Pinscher but that would be fifteen times heavier and larger." Most educated guesses suggest that crosses of the larger type German Short Haired Pinscher (no. 3 in Mr. Wolphofer's book) native German Shepherds, the Rottweiler, and perhaps the Greyhound and Black and Tan Terrier were used to perfect the Doberman by 1899. As we have seen, Miniature Pinscher were being produced in profusion long before this date.

(taken in part from Minature Pinscher Club of America, Inc.)