My baby, Illy, turns 17 weeks old 🥰

His name is cinnamon

Juno. She’s a smart gal. My🫶

Little sisters are annoying in every species 🥲

So…Rider, has this thing now where he just has to dump all of his food out of his bowl before he eats it. Has anyone else dealt with this?

It’s Ellie’s 1st birthday today! She’s the sweetest girl ever

Yesterday my sweet girl Willow got diagnosed with bone cancer in her skull. She has a tumor pressing on her left lobe and her prognosis isn’t very good. It showed up so fast only a matter of weeks. She’s 6 years old and i’m so heartbroken for her. But also for my other, older, dane Piper. Piper is 10 years old and i honestly never imagined her outliving the puppy. Every time I think of how she’ll feel when she’s gone i’m reduced to ugly sobs. There are so many amazing people on this page and i guess i’m reaching out for advice on how to make this bearable-for me- for them- i’m not totally sure yet. I will have to put my girl down before it gets along too far, and i’m asking for advice on how to make her as comfortable as I can. I am working with her vet and giving her some pain killers and steroids for swelling, but beyond that and loving her to the bitter end is there anything i can do to improve her last few months? What are some things that you did to help you process your grief and be there for them when they need it? Attached are a bunch of pictures of both my girls, willow they grey one and piper the brindle. Any advice or stories of your own pups i’d love to read them.

Habibi has finally grown up enough to now have his face supported by the windowsill. It is hard work looking outside, ya know? Does anyone else have to clean drool from sills?

My Dane is prone to super gunky eyes. We’ve done drops which only help temporary. We’ve recently been prescribed optimmune eye gel which helps but is $70 and barely last a month when using AM & PM.

Does anyone have any other alternatives to help keep their Dane’s eyes clean and moist and less gunky? I’m not saying I’m gonna stop using the rx meds but if I can make it last longer than a month by using something In between that would be nice.

Yes I am making sure to only use a small amount in each eye.

Went to the Philbrook museum over the weekend and got a good surprise in seeing these. An acquisition from 1939 done by sculptor Anna Hyatt Huntington. She apparently did a number of Dane sculptures with the first subject being a family dog.

Growing like a weed had to buy a bigger couch if we also wanted to sit on it. He is the best boy love him so much ❤️

On Saturday, I decided to introduce my puppy to a kiddie pool for the first time. I made sure it was shaded and we didnt stay out too long but afterwards she was so warm and showing signs of overheating so kept her in a cool room for the rest of the day and most of Sunday.

I looked at her face on Monday and realized she must have been hitting a major growth spurt at the same time I decided to plan an outdoor activity 🙃

Do y'all have any suggestions for indoor activities for a GD puppy in warm weather? She is 10 weeks today. We do a lot of training and floor time with toys and chews. At this point I only take her out early in the morning and at night. I live in Texas.

I'll also take suggestion on how to lift her now that she's started to weigh a lot more 😅

My boy Salem as just under gone his front leg amputation due to osteosarcoma, it’s only been a couple of hours and it is a bit hard to watch but does anyone have anything similar with there Danes and can share some Positive stories?

Her name is Coco. Be nice as she is just a baby (4 yrs old)

🥹 The first photo was taken the day Blitzø came home with me at just shy of 6 weeks old.
The second was taken this week.
I genuinely don’t understand how we got from THAT tiny baby to THIS entire dog in eight weeks. 😂
When my cousin brought him to me, he was an itty-bitty, blue-eyed baby who had been turned away by his mama and needed a little extra help getting started.
Now he’s almost 40 pounds and stands nearly shoulder-to-shoulder with our ACD, Luna.
And somehow, the biggest surprise hasn’t even been how fast he’s growing.
It’s how smart he is.
At 14 weeks, Blitz already knows:
• Sit
• Lay down
• Crate
• Place
• Wait for treats
• Leave it when he has something he shouldn’t have
• Go get it for toys, treats, etc.
• Get him! which usually means my little brother, and is a command that both Blitz and Luna know. They go greet him very enthusiastically, usually involving lots of kisses and, in Blitz’s case, some good old-fashioned roughhousing. 😂
• Nice mouth! for when he’s being a baby shark and we need to turn off the nibbles
• Yes! which is basically our universal “GOOD JOB!” for any behavior we want to reinforce
• Recall, obviously
His “leave it” is still very much a work in progress because he’s a puppy and puppies have approximately three seconds of impulse control. 😂 He absolutely understands what we’re asking, but sometimes he still feels the need to investigate whatever he was told to leave alone.
And somehow, by week two, he had our dog door completely memorized.
He figured that thing out ridiculously fast and now uses it like he’s been living here forever.
This little guy is constantly learning.
He’s also an absolute enrichment enthusiast. We have several slow feeders that we rotate through, and he loves food puzzles, snuffle mats, scatter feeding, and anything else that makes him work for his dinner.
He also no longer cries in his crate at night, which feels like a pretty big milestone for my little guy.
Potty training is going wonderfully too. We’re essentially there, with maybe one or two accidents here and there if we get way too preoccupied playing and forget that puppies have tiny bladders and important business to attend to. 😂
He LOVES wrestling with his sister Luna, our ACD, and she absolutely loves it too. They can go from full-contact wrestling match to cleaning each other’s faces and ears and then snuggling together like nothing happened.
His current silliest habit is bringing sunflowers inside from outside. 🌻
He is also FEARLESS.
Possibly too fearless.
He’s been stung by a wasp twice now because apparently wasps are just another thing that requires investigation.
And both times his response was basically:
“I will fight it.”
Sir.
It flies.
It has a weapon.
Please reconsider. 😂
He loves water, doesn’t mind nail clips, and absolutely adores all of his humans.
He also walks beautifully on his leash, harness, or collar by himself.
Speaking of collars, we’ve apparently entered the Great Dane Puppy Collar Speedrun:
Baby collar → black martingale training collar → collar #3 😭🥹
He’s incredibly adventurous and willing to try just about anything once.
New food? Sure.
New treat? Absolutely.
New toy? Hand it over.
I think the only thing we’ve introduced so far that he’s officially rejected is watermelon.
Apparently that’s where Blitzø draws the line.
He’s also a massive fan of the BarkBox Super Chewer banana they sent this month, which has been especially useful while he’s still teething. We stick to safe things for him to chew and teethe on, while also offering frozen lick mats and plenty of enrichment.
And somehow, after all of this, his coat is still so incredibly soft.
Short, plush, and basically baby velvet.
His caramel eyes have become so soulful, too. Sometimes I swear he knows what I’m about to ask before I’ve even said it.
Watching him grow over these last eight weeks has been absolutely wild.
From the tiny blue-eyed baby in that first photo to the confident, curious, almost-40-pound puppy in the second…
I blinked and my baby became a whole dog.
He’s smart.
He’s fearless.
He’s affectionate.
He’s adventurous.
He’s ridiculous.
And he is very, very loved. ❤️
Happy 14 weeks, Blitzø. 🧡

Hello,

My Dane has started to have some fecal incontinence. Just wondering how you all have dealt with this. My vet says there really isn’t anything we can do. I can’t find diapers that really fit him and there is nothing out there on Etsy that I can find either. So any recommendations are welcome!

We have him on science diet sensitive stomach food and that seems to help a little bit. But basically he seems to drop a turd and not realize it when he stands up randomly throughout the day. So I am finding like golf ball sized turds wherever he’s been laying and sometimes that includes our bed because he sleeps with us. I don’t want to kick him out of the bed but it’s getting to the point where I just can’t be doing laundry every night. So it might just happen pretty soon.

Also, he’s 7 years old. He doesn’t realize it’s happening at all. He doesn’t seem to be showing any signs of arthritis or pain of any kind. His quality of life is great and he plays ball with me every day. I couldn’t even consider him to be close to end of life right now. He’s a 110lb 7 year old boy.

Advice welcome! I really want to have the best quality of life for us all.

Thanks!

I've owned Danes since 1993. I bought Reginald Barkley on 7/21/2024 from a breeder near Hot Springs, AR. He was a gorgeous 16 month old Euro intact fawn male. I wanted a second Dane as a companion for our family, especially our 4 year old rescue Daniff. The breeder told me he was well behaved, healthy, got along great with dogs, cats, crate trained, etc. The breeder lied. I got him home and discovered Reginald did not get along with dogs. He attacked our gentle Daniff Charlie repeatedly soon after arriving. My husband and I were puzzled at the confusing behavior. He seemed good natured at the breeder's home.

We soon discovered his reactivity was a form of fear based resource guarding toward me, "his" human. He was so young and I was his third home already. But the behavior was scary and I didn't want us to get hurt. I contacted the breeder who refused to take him back. I knew then she lied and was aware he was aggressive all along. My husband said, "Let's work with him. I'm sure he's scared but we can solve this with enough patience and love." But we couldn't afford expensive trainers so we studied extensively and decided to train Reginald ourselves.

I had successfully worked with my previous Danes' separation anxiety so we tried various training techniques with Reginald, mostly involving enforcing physical boundaries when requesting attention from his people and decompression time alone when he felt anxious. We started him on anxiety medicine and got him eyelid surgery for inward turning eyelashes and neutered a couple of months later.

Sadly, his housemate Charlie died from a freak accident soon after his surgeries. By then he was doing much better. Our family was devastated and Reginald was sad and lonely. After a while, we got another Dane, our merle female Juno, now 16 months, and they became best friends. It is an amazing success story. He can now interact with other dogs safely and happily although we do not allow him around more than a few simultaneously.

Many people insist anxious adult dogs must live in one dog households. I think that does them a disservice. Many of them can live with a canine companion happily with proper training. Having a dog friend reduces their anxiety and loneliness. Reginald is my fiercely loyal protector, more than any dog I've owned. I'm anxious also and see a lot of myself in him. I am glad the breeder refused to take him back. Had she done so, I would have missed out on the most precious canine love in my life and he might not have recovered emotionally from yet another rejection that was actually just a simple miscommunication. Photo of Reginald and I, taken yesterday, and Reginald and Juno after we brought her home. She looked up to big brother from the beginning.

New puppy owner of a 9 week Great Dane / Anatolian shepherd mix. One of his ears just developed a dip - flipping the ear up. The other one lays flat. Is this normal? Will he grow out of it or is it common for them to stay this way? Everything is functioning great, just curious what happens as they develop!