THE GREAT DANE: gentle but giant
Unlike the Dalmatian, the Great Dane may well come from the country which gives him his name, though he has also been claimed by Germany. This hugely alarming dog, like many large men, usually has the
kindliest disposition; I feel sure he enjoyed carrying a lamp in his mouth ahead of benighted travellers, by his mere presence assuring them of their safety, as he was taught to do in the 18th century. He could also be sent back five or six miles to retrieve a forgotten parcel. These were among the services he was pleased to render.
It seems scarcely necessary to say that he should be wisely handled from puppyhood, for an undisciplined or irritable Great Dane is a terrifying thought. Even an amiable one, anxious to please, provides some elements of peril. Too exuberant a display of affection will easily land you on the floor, and there is also the tail to be considered. It is long, and as hard as a piece of wood and, unlike a piece of wood, it wags. Now this tail may get damaged if the dog is confined in too small a kennel and so generally is this danger recognised that dog shops supply a special tail-protector. In my admittedly limited experience of the breed, I have noticed that danger from the tail is as much to be taken into account as danger to the tail. One happy swoop across a low table, and off go all the teacups.
Dear Brutus! the only Great Dane I ever intimately knew. How remorseful he was whenever his enormous clumsiness had led him into transgression. He seemed to say he knew he had done wrong, but how could he help it? His owner, the poet Dorothy Wellesley, forgave him all his trespasses:
“My great marbled hound” (she wrote) “Leaps at them (the rooks) as they fly.”
The one in the illustration is a harlequin, which means that he may have a wall-eye and a pink nose. This truly noble dog, this great marbled hound, ought to be seen in his entirety. He stands 30in tall, and weighs at the minimum 120lb, or nearly ten stone. He has been with us for some two hundred years, possibly three hundred, when dogs were used for pulling carts, even as they are used today in Belgium and Holland. So muscular a dog as the Dane, almost the size of a Shetland pony, would have been well adapted to cart harness. Why not use him today, to pull the mowing machine?