diff --git a/R/compboost.R b/R/compboost.R
index b62b3761..cc4c7ebf 100644
--- a/R/compboost.R
+++ b/R/compboost.R
@@ -337,8 +337,10 @@ Compboost = R6::R6Class("Compboost",
       checkmate::assertNumeric(learning_rate, lower = 0, upper = 1, any.missing = FALSE, len = 1)
       checkmate::assertNumeric(oob_fraction, lower = 0, upper = 1, any.missing = FALSE, len = 1, null.ok = TRUE)
 
-      if (! target %in% names(data)) {
-        stop ("The target ", target, " is not present within the data")
+      if (! isRcppClass(target, "Response")) {
+        if (! target %in% names(data)) {
+          stop ("The target ", target, " is not present within the data")
+        }
       }
       if (inherits(loss, "C++Class")) {
         stop ("Loss should be an initialized loss object by calling the constructor: ", deparse(substitute(loss)), "$new()")
@@ -369,7 +371,7 @@ Compboost = R6::R6Class("Compboost",
 
       self$oob_fraction = oob_fraction
       self$target = self$response$getTargetName()
-      self$data = data[private$train_idx, !colnames(data) %in% target, drop = FALSE]
+      self$data = data[private$train_idx, !colnames(data) %in% self$target, drop = FALSE]
       self$optimizer = optimizer
       self$loss = loss
       self$learning_rate = learning_rate
diff --git a/R/helper.R b/R/helper.R
index 9084e5e5..200e0211 100644
--- a/R/helper.R
+++ b/R/helper.R
@@ -1,7 +1,7 @@
 assertRcppClass = function (x, x_class, stop_when.error = TRUE)
 {
   cls = class(x)
-  rcpp_class = TRUE
+  
   if (! grepl("Rcpp", cls)) {
     stop("Object was not exposed by Rcpp.")
   }
@@ -10,6 +10,20 @@ assertRcppClass = function (x, x_class, stop_when.error = TRUE)
   }
 }
 
+isRcppClass = function (x, x_class)
+{
+  cls = class(x)
+  is_rcpp_class = TRUE
+  
+  if (! grepl("Rcpp", cls)) {
+    is_rcpp_class = FALSE
+  }
+  if (! grepl(x_class, cls)) {
+    is_rcpp_class = FALSE
+  }
+  return(is_rcpp_class)
+}
+
 vectorToResponse = function (vec, target)
 {
   # Transform factor or character labels to -1 and 1
diff --git a/vignettes/extending_compboost.Rmd b/vignettes/extending_compboost.Rmd
index d47fba1d..6d2d2436 100644
--- a/vignettes/extending_compboost.Rmd
+++ b/vignettes/extending_compboost.Rmd
@@ -23,7 +23,7 @@ library(compboost)
 
 `compboost` was designed to provide a component-wise boosting framework with
 maximal flexibility. This document gives an overview about the two main
-possibilities of extending compboost with custom functions. We will have 
+possibilities of extending compboost with custom functions. We will take 
 a look at:
 
 - Using custom losses.