Great Danes of Today

By Beryl Lee Booker

Originally published in the 1930s, this very scarce early work on the Great Dane is both expensive and hard to find in its first edition. VINTAGE DOG BOOKS have republished it, using the original text and photographs, as part of their CLASSIC BREED BOOKS SERIES. The book's one hundred and fifty pages contain thirteen detailed chapters and many black and white photos of famous Great Danes of the Day : Danes of Today. Modern History. Choosing and Caring for a Dane. Breeding Problems. Breeding, Feeding and Rearing. Exhibiting Danes. Standard of Points. Pedigrees. Imported Danes. Charts of Line Breeding. Analysis of Litters. Heights. Appendix of Challenge Certificate Winners Since 1900. K.C.S.B. Members 1933-1937. Kennel Prefix and Affix. Also included are a number of illustrated advertisements for Great Dane Kennels. This is a fascinating read for any Great Dane enthusiast or historian of the breed, but also contains much information that is still useful and practical today. Many of the earliest dog breed books, particularly those dating back to the early 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. VINTAGE DOG BOOKS are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Read Books Ltd.
• Release date: Dec 3, 2012
• ISBN: 9781447487289

Book preview

CHAPTER I

DANES OF TO-DAY

IT was our intention to include in this book a short history of the Great Dane. This idea we have been reluctantly compelled to abandon; the history, if it is to be written at all, would fill the Encyclopœdia Britannica, as the first record of a Dane comes from China, a little matter of five hundred years ago. In the Illustrated Kennel News of December 12th, 1913, appeared a reproduction of a Chinese drawing of a Dane of the Ming Dynasty, chained, to show his size, to a post. The Dane, a black, with white blaze on face, collar and feet, was a very easily recognizable specimen, short coated, with typical uncropped ears, dense short coat, and somewhat coarse head. The picture was in Sir Hugh Lane’s collection.

Next, a visit to the National Gallery revealed several paintings of Dane-like dogs, mostly in mediæval hunting pictures, but of easily recognizable size and type. The Big Smooth Dog has been with us a very long time; and the pictures, from so many countries, indicate that for hundreds of years these dogs have been bred together and prized for their size and noble appearance. Many other breeds have supplied their quota: Pointer characteristics, the motionless attitude, tail in a line with back, one foot raised, are by no means uncommon; and the Dane, used as a gundog, is quiet, obedient and has an excellent nose and light mouth, which indicates more sporting ancestors. Watch a Dane tracking. In some cases a horizontal frown appears, and an occasional pup with dew-claws on hind legs reveal the bloodhound or St. Bernard ancestry.

The one common factor, however, and a very fixed characteristic, is size. The smooth fine coat has been evolved from rougher-coated ancestors. The last traces of these forebears appear in the form of long hair on under side of tail.

The Great Smooth Dog has been, and still is, known by a variety of names. Justifiable pride in the types evolved has led to the dog being known in various quarters as The Great Dane, The Deutsche Dogge (German dog), Boarhound, Bauer (peasant’s or farmer’s) hound, and doubtless in 1500 the dog was known to the Chinese as the great Chinese hound!

Eighty years ago the dogs in the Rhine provinces were known as the Grosse Dogge, the Ulmer Dogge and the German Hetzruede; and I quote the following paragraph from The Kennel, page 103, written, I believe, by Mr. Blass, and edited in the Dane page by Dr. Morell Mackenzie.

"From the German Hetzruede to the German Great Dane.

"The name of Herr Fritz Kirschbaum is so well known to all students of the Great Dane in this country and America, and to all those who were connected with the breed during the last twenty years of the nineteenth century, that it seems hardly necessary to introduce him, especially as I think that nearly everyone who takes up Great Danes makes a point of mastering the history of the breed as far as possible. For the benefit of those beginners, however, ‘who know not’ Kirschbaum I may say that he is one of that select army of German pioneers who made the breed in the ’seventies and ’eighties. Among many men who gave time and money he was one of the most prominent, and to him and one or two others all Great Dane lovers owe an immense debt in the fact that they succeeded in converting the great ungainly, coarse Hetzruede into what Herr Kirschbaum rightly describes as the Apollo of Dogdom. In these circumstances I shall not apologise for giving a translation of Herr Kirschbaum’s most interesting article which appeared in Sportblatt of April 21st, under the above heading:—

‘The Standard of the Great Dane says: The Great Dane should be built on the lines of a handsome horse, everything should be uniform, and should present a beautiful appearance. The above Standard further says: The Great Dane unites in its general appearance size, strength and elegance, in a degree unsurpassed by any other breed. It has not the heavy and lumbering appearance of the Mastiff, nor has it the light and slender appearance which reminds one of the Greyhound, but it is the middle between the two extremes. Considerable size, combined with strength and elegant formation, wide step and proud bearing, the head and the neck carried high, the tail, when in repose, down, in a straight line when excited, or, possibly, carried slightly upwards, etc. Who does not know that majestic, proud bearing which, notwithstanding its size, is inherent in such a graceful manner in its owner? Who does not know the handsomest of all the dogs de luxe, the Great Dane!

‘One must not think, however, that the Germans breed this, their national dog, without any desire to improve him. It would not be true, though every lover of dogs must admit that the Great Dane has reached a high degree of perfection.

‘I remember that fifty years ago the breeding of the Grosse Dogge (also called the Ulmer Dogge) took deep root in the whole province of the Rhine. They bred there then black, blue, white-and-blue animals, and also white-and-blacks and biscuit-fawns. This breeding continued for some years, but in the end there were so many Danes that they were put to draw milk-carts, which ended their glory. From 1873 till 1878 there was, especially in Wuertemberg, but also in Berlin, a great demand for Great Danes. This was at the time when Prince Bismarck received as a present his famous imperial dog, the large Great Dane Tyras. This king of dogs was for many years admired by travellers from the whole world in the palace of the Imperial Chancellor, in the Wilhelmstrasse, in Berlin. At that time the blue colour was the popular one, and it is from that time that the name of Deutsche Dogge was, so to say, naturalised, and it was also from that time that all such names as Ulmer Dogge, Grosse Dogge, Bauerhund, Hetzrude, etc., were done with. Above all, the totally erroneous name of Great Dane has thus been done away with. If I, as a great friend of dogs, as a man that has sacrificed nigh on half a century to my favourites; if I, the old Dane man, take the liberty of asking English sporting gentlemen a request, it is this one: Give us, the Germans, the correct name—the German Dogge—for our national dog; for this dog is without any doubt an old German! Even its name Dogge is pure German and cannot be confounded with the name Dog, for no German would think of speaking about the Deutsche Dogge as if it were about the German Dog!

‘The Deutsche Dogge found a home in German States even before powder had found its use! One has to look at our steel and copper engravings, at our large paintings, in which the old Germans with the bow, with the spear, and with the club, accompanied by one or two of those big Boarhounds, went against dangerous animals. So far as traditions teach us, these dogs had been in olden times the privilege of the knights and lords of the castles only, and no one else had the right to possess such Danes. Prince Ulrich von Wuertemberg had, many hundred years ago, such big Hetzrueden bred and used for sport by his bailiffs.

‘That these large Danes had been kept more than a hundred years ago in the province of the Rhine in the large peasant-yards as a protection against the robbing French marauders, is well known to me from my father’s grandparents. If it be thus proven that our present-day Great Dane had been for many centuries native of the States of Germany, the breeding of Great Danes, properly speaking, had not attained its correct spreading before the year 1885. Since that time till 1890 one could see at some shows 150 and more Great Danes. Until the year 1886 Wuertemberg was the stronghold of the Great Dane. This fancy came to an end there quite suddenly, but more on account of Berlin having with great trouble bred the Danes, and I still remember with joy the founding of the German Great Dane Club in 1888 in Berlin, for I belonged to the same almost from its beginning till quite lately. It would not be too much to say that the Great Dane found its correct shape all the world over through the channel of the Berlin breeding. For about thirty years the Maburg exporters have come almost every week to Berlin in order to ship about fifteen to twenty Danes, principally to South America. These exportations diminished a bit during the last two years, because the breeding of these expensive animals does not pay. It is just the same with the Great Dane breeders of the other parts of Germany. Even if the dog-fancy does not represent a trade, and should not do so, every prudent breeder, if he is not a Crœsus, would like to cover a bit his big expenses through the sale of his products. The latter eat, with the present hard times, quite a fortune; it is therefore not paying to keep more Danes than can be kept for the owner’s own interest.

‘The Great Dane, with regard to its form and general appearance, had to undergo some changes during the last half-century. Before then the principal points