Meet George the Great
Dane
The first time we saw George, our
beloved Great Dane, he was no more than a tiny, cowering ball of
fuzzy fur. As my wife Christie opened the door of the crate he’d
traveled in, he teetered to a standing position and looked out at us,
moving his head slowly from side to side, taking in the wonder of
it all. Finally, as if weighing us up and deciding we were acceptable, he
tentatively pushed his little nose forward and gave Christie her
first lick.
Puppy
love: A young George with Dave's wife Christie. Even as a pup he
had
comically large
paws .
He came into our
lives in January 2006, just a few months after we had married and set up home in Arizona .
We both had busy jobs, Christie selling medical equipment while
I was a property developer, but she had always planned that, once
she had a house of her own, she would also have a
dog.
She wanted a Great Dane as they make
great family pets, so we tracked down a litter of 13, born 1,000
miles away in Oregon .
Their owner emailed
us a photo showing a chaotic jumble of paws, snouts and tails. Twelve were entangled
with one another, but our eyes were drawn to one pup standing
apart from the rest. He was clearly the runt, endearing him to
Christie immediately.
Though it didn’t really register,
George’s paws were comically large even then. But all we saw was this cute
puppy. We certainly never dreamed he would one day become the
biggest dog in the world, standing nearly 4ft high at the
shoulder, 7ft long and weighing 252
pounds. Right now, he just looked
bewildered.
George made the long journey from
Oregon to Phoenix by plane and we picked him up from the freight area,
tired but unshaken.. As soon as George settled into our home, we
discovered our plans to be fair but firm parents were wishful thinking.
All the things that make
Great Danes
wonderful pets — their lack of aggression and their attachment to humans — make them more
emotionally sensitive than other dogs. They need to be with their
‘pack’ at all times and at night the cute pup with intensely blue
eyes turned into a caterwauling banshee whenever we tried
to leave him alone in the kitchen.
No matter how much we reminded
ourselves that he had every home comfort (warm dog bed, warm
blanket, warm kitchen, squeaky bone), each whimper created a
picture in our heads of a
tragic, abandoned
pup, desperate for his mother. Eventually, we gave in and shunted George’s dog bed
into our bedroom.
Magnificent: George measures more than
7 ft from nose to tail and weighs 252 pounds- one and is the world's
biggest dog, but he's terrified of Chihuahuas...
In the coming months, Christie really
threw herself into being a mum to George. As well as a photo
album, he had a growth chart — we were soon reading it in awe. At five
months he still acted like a puppy, chasing his tail and playing
games of fetch and tug-of-war with his favorite bit of rope. But he
was already the size of a fully-grown Labrador . He was putting
on more than a pound a day and he bounded around like Bambi,
skittering on our wooden floors and hurling himself at everything he
fancied, including us humans. His displays of affection could leave
you pinned temporarily against
a wall or a piece of
furniture.
His size did not go unnoticed in the
outside world. Our local park had a section for puppies but we were
bullied out of it by other owners, who were scared George would
hurt their pups — but the opposite was true.
The smaller dogs ran around and under
him, and he’d be constantly
sidestepping them, obviously anxious
and jittery. Slowly we realized that our enormous puppy was a big
softie. Besides his terror of being left alone, he had a fear of
water. He’d growl anxiously at the side of
our swimming pool, alarmed that his
‘pack’ members would so willingly place
themselves in danger of
drowning.
If the pool was
his most-hated place, his favorite was our bedroom.
Eventually he outgrew the single
mattress we placed there for him and preferred instead the comfort of
our king-sized bed — sprawling between us like some
over-indulged prince while we spent half the night clinging onto the
edges.
Paws
for thought: George's giant feet dwarf Dave's hand
In the summer of 2006, we solved this
problem by buying him his
own queen-sized
mattress, which he still sleeps on today at the bottom of our bed. But soon we
encountered another challenge as George reached doggie puberty. Once he
had grabbed life by the lapels, now he was grabbing onto legs —
table legs, chair legs, human legs, he wasn’t picky — and doing what
all male dogs do with the vigor of a canine
giant.
He calmed down in the furniture
department after we had him neutered, but then he took up a new
hobby, eating as if it were an Olympic sport. A sausage on the
barbecue was like a siren to a passing sailor. You couldn’t turn your
back for a minute. And he was so tall that he actually had to bend
down to pinch food off kitchen counters.
He could reach the high shelves as
well, so we had to hide everything away in cupboards. Soon, he was getting
through around 100lb of dry dog food every
month.
As he approached his first birthday in
November 2006, weighing 196 pounds, it was getting physically
impossible to make him go anywhere he didn’t want to — including
the vet’s surgery. He had not forgotten the time he went there in
possession of his manhood — and came out less than whole. As soon
as he recognized the entrance, he refused to move. So I had to take
him around to the less familiar back door instead.
For all these troubles, George gave us
plenty in return, not least the following year when Christie lost
the baby she was carrying. Evidently tuned in to her grief, George
was a constant presence at her side. When she sat, he sat too.
When she stood, he stood and padded alongside her to wherever she
was going.
His personality grew more delightful
the bigger he got. A male Great Dane typically weighs from 126 to
154 pounds, but by Christmas 2007 George weighed 210 pounds — bigger
than most men. At this
point, he loved
being chauffeured around in my golf cart and would sit in it, his haunches on the seat and
front legs on the floor. By Christmas 2008, our canine colossus
weighed 252 pounds. A friend suggested he might be a contender for
the Guinness Book of Records, but we had other things to
think about: Christie had
discovered that she
was pregnant again.
With
size comes problems: George the giant barely fits in the
back of his owner's SUV
The trouble was, when our daughter
Annabel arrived that September George made it clear he wanted nothing
to do with this interloper. He was used to spending nights in
delightful oblivion at the foot of our bed. Annabel’s high-decibel
presence simply wasn’t on. When she cried, he’d wake, harrumph and
then turn over in annoyance. Once it was clear the racket was going
to continue, he’d exhale
heavily again, till
one of us finished that mysterious feeding thing we did with the noisy
intruder.
But while he might not have cared much
for Annabel, George loved
her dolls,
especially a stuffed green one that played a nursery rhyme when squeezed. Whenever he could,
he placed it between his paws and pressed it so he could
hear the tune. It was like a security blanket. It was a period of
such big adjustment for him that if it made him happy, then it was fine
by us and our patience was rewarded. Slowly, George understood that Annabel
was our pack’s youngest member and in need of his affection and
protection. And on Christmas morning, he ended his
three-month sulk, acknowledging her presence with a lick of her hand.
It was the best present we could have had — although the beginning
of 2010 brought more good news.
A
doggone miracle: George the Great Dane with the Nasser's
daughter Annabel at home in
Arizona
Over the
previous weeks, while Annabel slept, Christie had applied to the Guinness World Records people on
George’s behalf. That February, one of their adjudicators came
to watch George being measured in the presence of a vet. He
was officially declared not just the world’s tallest living dog (43
inches from paw to shoulder) but the tallest dog
ever.
The following week we flew to Chicago
to appear on the Oprah Winfrey Show and were put up in one of
the city’s most luxurious hotels. We had a huge sitting room,
dining area and even a bar — but there was just one problem. There
was nowhere for George to sleep.
As we enjoyed a gourmet meal and a
bottle of red wine that night, he struggled to settle on two roll-out
divans provided for him. Infuriatingly, they wouldn’t stay
together. So he had his head on one and back end on the other, but his
stomach was sagging onto the carpet.
‘You know what we need to do,’ I joked.
‘Give George our bed to sleep on and
have the couches in this room
ourselves.’
Christie looked at me with a telltale
gleam in her eye and I knew immediately my joke had been a fatal
error. An hour later, our boy was sprawled in splendor in our huge,
fluffy king-size bed.
‘Well,’ whispered Christie, ‘George is
the star here, after all.’ She was right, of course, and since his
appearance on TV, Giant George has built a following around the world,
with his own fan club, website and 70,000 fans on
Facebook.
None of this, of course, means anything
to George. He still spends his days doing what he has always liked
best: eating, playing and
sleeping. Our
cherished pet may have become a global celebrity — but really, he’s just one of the
family.
Man's
biggest friend: Devoted owner Dave Nasser with George.
