38 
House & Garden 
A Count ry Place Dog of Fine Lineage 
and Exacting Points 
WILLIAMS HAYNES 
Photographs by R. W. Tauskey 
The Great Dane’s head is very expressive 
of his noble character. The head points of 
any breed of dogs are their most distinguish¬ 
ing characteristic, and Great Dane breeders 
have with great care developed the heads of 
their dogs to a point of fine perfection. The 
skull is long with a slight crease up the cen¬ 
ter. The cheeks must be as flat and smooth 
as possible. The foreface is long and broad 
and deep with a square, blunt muzzle and a 
large nose. If the bridge of the nose is not 
wide enough, the dog, when viewed in full 
face, looks snippy, and should the proper 
depth of the muzzle be lacking and the lips 
too tight and wanting in squareness, the dog, 
in profile, looks what fanciers call “snouty.” 
Of course, a combination of these two faults 
will quite ruin a Dane’s head, giving it a 
common, underbred appearance. The Dane’s 
correct expression, alert and masterful but 
without the slightest suggestion of mean¬ 
ness, depends very largely upon small, dark 
eyes set under prominent, well developed 
eyebrows. Neatly cropped and well carried 
ears add a great deal to the dog’s dashing 
aristocratic appearance, and in England the 
anti-cropping edict in force has been a severe 
handicap that the breed is only just begin¬ 
ning to overcome. 
Teutonic Measurements 
The perfect symmetry of the Dane has 
been reduced to strict mathematical terms 
by his methodical German friends who have 
discovered that in a dog that is 30" tall at the 
foreshoulder, the line from the shoulder to 
the ground should be divided in half just at 
the point of the elbow and brisket. More¬ 
over, the line from the crupper, which is the 
top point of the hindquarters, to the ground 
should be just equal in length to the same 
line from the shoulders, and it should be cut 
into a third at the angle of the hip and flank. 
The harlequin wears 
a mottled coat that 
makes him an inter¬ 
esting spot in the land¬ 
scape 
Extremely large dogs are very often taller 
at the crupper than at the shoulder, a fault 
that is usually combined with straight, stilty 
hindlegs, and straight hindlegs, in turn, re¬ 
sult in a jerky, ungraceful movement. So 
closely are proper conformation and the ele¬ 
gant grace of the breed bound up together 
that there is the best reason for demanding 
perfect symmetry in the Dane. For this 
same reason, dogs that are markedly lower 
behind than in front—a malformation stig¬ 
matized on the Continent as “hyena dog”— 
are in particular disfavor. 
The German measurements also require 
that the line down the back from the point 
of the shoulders to the crupper be one-sixth 
longer than half of the dog’s height. This 
is also the ideal length for his tail. It is an 
interesting, and alas, sometimes a disap¬ 
pointing thing, for a Great Dane owner to 
apply the yardstick—not the tape measure 
—to his dog to discover how he measures up 
to the perfect scale thus laid down. 
Other points that count in judging a Dane 
are the legs and feet, the tail, coat and color. 
The front legs should be straight and heavily 
boned; the hindlegs long, very muscular, 
with straight, low hocks. The feet are of 
good size, but they must be very compact 
and well knuckled up. The tail, which is 
thick at the base and tapers to a fine point, 
ought to reach just to the hocks. Of two 
evils, however, a tail that is too short is bet¬ 
ter than one that is too long. “Short, dense, 
and sleek looking” is the official description 
of the coat. It must be neither 
coarse and wiry nor of a silky 
softness in texture. 
The Recognized Colors and 
Points 
Five distinct colors are recog¬ 
nized : fawn ; brindle ; blue, which 
is a slatey grey; black; and harle¬ 
quin, or small, jet-black spots 
evenly distributed over a white 
ground. The German breeders are 
very scrupulous in mating to keep 
the different colors pure and dis¬ 
tinct, and while the fawns and 
brindles are interbred, and the 
blues, blacks, and harlequins, still 
to cross a harlequin with a brindle, 
for example, would be a mesal¬ 
liance but one degree worse than 
mating to a mastiff or greyhound. 
The different points that make 
up the typical dog are well summed 
up by the Standard of the Great 
Dane Club of England, which 
{Continued on page 92) 
The elegantly built Dane, as 
shown by Mr. O. Carley Harri- 
man's brindle Succabone Pyra, 
New York and Boston winner 
last year, is as lithe as a tiger 
I N these days of electric burglar alarms 
and telephone connections the larger 
breeds of dogs fare badly. There is now but 
little demand for their strength and courage 
as a protection against unwelcome visitors 
about the country place. In the city, we are 
more and more inclined to give up the town 
house for the apartment, and they are frank¬ 
ly too much of a dog for a small room. Even 
the dog shows, to which so many breeds 
have owed their first burst of popularity, 
have been a positive drawback to the large 
varieties. Their board bills, when kept in 
kennels, are considerable, and express 
charges to and from the exhibitions, being 
based upon so much per pound per mile, 
have kept many with a true love for the 
great dogs from taking them up as a hobby. 
And yet a great, powerful, dignified dog 
adds a touch to the spacious hall or to the 
broad lawn that nothing else in the world 
can give. They fit perfectly into such sur¬ 
roundings, and they furnish them with a 
dignity and just the right suggestion of 
pride and strength. Moreover, it is not 
merely our imagination that makes us as¬ 
sociate nobility of character with a large 
dog. He is courageous without the necessity 
of being reckless, and he is calm and gentle 
because he is conscious of his strength. 
Why the Dane Fits 
Because he has all of these desirable 
attributes of the large dogs and because 
with all his great size and powerful 
strength he is a dog of fine sym¬ 
metry and extreme gracefulness 
the Great Dane has continued to 
hold his own in this day of the ter¬ 
rier and the toy. It is rather curi¬ 
ous that the biggest of all the big 
dogs, the one whose very name is 
Great Dane, should have retained 
the favor once enjoyed by all big 
dogs in these times when size is no 
longer an especial recommenda¬ 
tion. He has done so because 
there is nothing unwieldy nor 
lumbersome about him—although 
an active dog he is never clumsy. 
Lithe and graceful as a tiger, 
with hard muscles that ripple un¬ 
der his fine satin coat with his 
every movement, he is an impres¬ 
sively powerful dog. His calm 
courage shines out of his bright 
eyes and shows plainly in the 
proud carriage of his great head. 
He fairly commands that the ad¬ 
jective “noble” be linked insepar¬ 
ably with his name. 
Fawn is one of the 
recognized colors. This 
dog. Prince von Weise- 
nau, is owned by 
Charles Ludivig 
