The World’s Oldest Great Dane is also the tallest of his breed.
Records are interesting things. For example, did you know that the World’s Oldest Great Dane is also the owner of the World’s Tallest Great Dane record as well?
We here at Dog O’Day learned this through People Magazine, and our first thought was Fezzik’s (Andre the Giant) complaint in The Princess Bride: “I can’t help being the biggest and the strongest.”
Freddy, a British Great Dane living in Weeting, Norfolk, turned 8 years old on May 17, and with the help of his owner Claire Stoneman and their neighbor Erin, he celebrated with a birthday party for himself and his litter sister Fleur.
Theoretically, though it’s a bit hard to calculate, this would make Freddy around 54 years old, which is a long lifespan for such a colossal dog (he weighs 210 pounds, that’s more than some NHL hockey players). But given that for every 4.4 pounds a dog carries, their life expectancy drops, it works out that he’s very old indeed.
Freddy eats a ton. Like not literally, but People estimated his monthly food costs to be around $630. PER MONTH.
The New York Post reports that in 2017, Freddy was crowned the Guinness World Record for Tallest Living Dog at nearly 41 inches at the withers (that’s about the height of a typical 5-year-old girl). When he’s standing on his hind legs, he’s about seven feet tall, so he could easily play in the NBA.
The University at Albany of the Division I America East Conference uses the Great Dane as their team’s mascot, the only NCAA canine mascot to represent the breed.
Great Danes have been in the news lately as the new Scooby-Doo movie Scoob! released in mid-May, which longtime fans had a mixed opinion about, but it introduced the Mystery Inc characters to a new generation of potential fans and could become the springboard for a new Hanna-Barbera Cinematic Universe, which could be fun.
People says that Freddy’s title of World’s Oldest Great Dane isn’t official yet, but Stoneman is in the process of getting the paperwork taken care of.