The recent discoveries of a spin-Peierls transition in two inorganic oxide compounds permit new studies of this novel magnetic transition through substitutional doping. We report the investigations of nickel and cobalt substitutions on the copper site in copper germanate, CuGeO3. The magnetization and specific heat of single crystal samples are used to explore the effects of doping that give rise to a spin-flop transition. Specifically, we find that the Néel state exhibits a spin-flop transition for either dopant, with a critical field of approximately 1 tesla. Surprisingly, the easy axis in the ordered state for nickel doping is the a-axis. This differs from the c-axis easy axis observed for other dopants, such as Zn, Co and Mn.