THE GREAT DANE. 



87 



and if too close together he has a treacher- 

 ous look. 



Another very important point is the grace- 

 ful carriage of the tail. When it is curled 

 over the back it makes an otherwise hand- 

 some dog look mean, and a tail that curls 

 at the end like a corkscrew is also very 

 ugly. In former times " faking " was not 

 unfrequently resorted to to correct a faulty 

 tail carriage, but it is easily detected, be- 

 cause when the dog is excited he raises the 

 tail up to the point where it has been 

 operated upon, and from there it is carried 

 in an unnaturally different direction in a 

 more or less lifeless 

 way. " Faked " tails 

 are now hardly ever 

 seen. Great Danes 

 sometimes injure the 

 end of the tail by 

 hitting it against a 

 hard substance, and 

 those with a good car- 

 riage of tail are most 

 liable to this because 

 in excitement they 

 slash it about, whereas 

 the faulty position of 

 the tail, curled over 

 the back, insures im- 

 munity from harm. If 

 a dog's tail has been 

 damaged, it should be 

 attended to at once 

 to allay inflammation, 

 otherwise mortification 

 may set in and some 

 of the joints of the tail 

 will have to be taken 

 off. 



Cases have probably 

 occurred where the end 

 of the tail was taken 

 off to get rid of the ugly corkscrew twist, 

 and this may have been the reason for 

 the proposal to disqualify all curtailed 

 dogs. 



Until recently British Great Dane breeders 

 and exhibitors have paid very little atten- 

 tion to colour, on the principle that, like a 

 good horse, a good Great Dane cannot be 



a bad colour. The English clubs, however, 

 have now in this particular also adopted the 

 German standard. 



The orthodox colours are brindle, fawn, 

 blue, black, and harlequin. In the brindle 

 dogs the ground colour should be any shade 

 from light yellow to dark red-yellow on 

 which the brindle appears in darker 

 stripes. The harlequins have on a pure 

 white ground fairly large black patches, 

 which must be of irregular shape, broken 

 up as if they had been torn, and not have 

 rounded outlines. When brindle Great 

 Danes are continuously bred together, it 



LIBETT VAN DE 



LATE OWNER, MISS 



PRINS BY CH. HATTO OF HOLLAND ADY. 



E. MACKAY SCOTT. 



has been found that they get darker, and 

 that the peculiar " striping " disappears, 

 and in that case the introduction of a good 

 fawn into the strain is advisable. The 

 constant mating of harlequins has the ten- 

 dency to make the black patches dis- 

 appear, and the union with a good black 

 Great Dane will prevent the loss of colour. 



