Time

I am a very busy Great Dane. There is always something I need to do. I have a human who needs constant supervision, a house mate that needs a helping hand from time to time and a cat who needs to be reminded constantly that he is the cat and as the cat he is low man on this totem pole. I need to grab a nap as often as I can so in case I am called into duty, I will be ready, willing and able. It would not look too good to fall asleep while on cat watch. There are days when I have squirrel and bird watch. My human used to send us out to chase the squirrels from the bird feeder. That took up a lot of time as we rushed out and sniffed at the base of the tree like we were going to climb it. I think that squirrel duty was taking too much of my human's time so now the squirrels look like little gray furry pigs with tails.

My human does strange things with her time. When we could be out playing around, she has these little sticks she twirls around string and socks and stuff appear. Now I may be only a Great Dane but I know that it is possible to get socks that are already socks and not just string. Those sock things take a lot of time and I just don't get it. It seems like a complete waste of time to me. I try to tell her by poking at the sticks and once my human sister's dog tried to eat a couple of the wooden sticks. Not one tiny bit of the sock was hurt but my human kept talking about the time spent on the sock. You gotta choose your time and if you want to waste it with sticks and string, I don't get it but hey, it's your time and as long as you give me MY time, I'm all good.

Choices

Life is about choices.

You make good ones, most of the time things work out.

You make bad ones, most of the time things don't work out.

I can choose to take the food off the table. It's certainly easy enough but how mad will my human/pack leader get and will I get any food for the rest of the day?

I can choose to sit patiently and watch my human/pack leader eat and hope I will get a taste.

A very good friend told me, "Good or bad choices always have consequences. Either you learn or you don't." Simple, right?

Life is about choices.

Size is everything

Don't let anyone fool you. Size is everything. I can amble over to the food dish at my leisure and take over the fullest bowl with no problem. I can get next to my human and block out Pepper and Manny with the greatest of ease. Only one problem is that when I do that my human/pack leader makes me give equal opportunity to the little squirts. Now, Pepper, being part lab and part border collie isn't exactly a squirt in most people's minds but hey, he can walk under me so what does that tell you? When the human is sitting down, Pepper can put his head on her knee but I can put mine on her shoulder. I can look into her eyes and pretend I was just passing by. I can lean on people who are too close to my human and they move over. If I was allowed to jump up on people, I could put my feet on their shoulders and look them in the eye.

The bed is mine! I can take up pretty much all of the bed but being a gentleman, I let my human have half. Now, if she tries to move into my space, I can just stretch out my legs and extend my claws...just stretching, you know. The bed is mine!

Now who says size isn't everything? They don't have any!

Dropping off

My house mate Pepper is a drop off. When he was a puppy, some human left him at at church (like church people are going to take in dropped off dogs!) and my human felt sorry for him and took him home with her. That was nearly 14 years ago and Pepper still acts like a puppy. I let him have his way a lot too because I'm just a good guy and anyway, he was here before me.

Now, Pepper is one lucky dog. Most drop offs never get picked up.

If you can't care for us, don't have us. There are ways to prevent having puppies. Look it up.

Are you part of global warming?

If it used to be yours...

get over it. It's mine until I don't want it any longer. Then maybe you can have it back.

Litters

If I had a hot female Great Dane to have puppies with, I could easily sire 100 puppies. Due to global warming, etc, I have never sired even one nor will I be able to thanks to my human. A female Great Dane can have about 8-12 puppies at a time so if I sired 10 litters of 10 puppies, we could have 100 Max babies running around raising cane. But who would want 100 Great Danes running amok? Talk about global warming...

My human told me she read about a man in Israel who has 8 wives and 67 children and he wants another wife and more children. At age 58, he may get them. Another one legged man who has 78 children with 12 wives is aiming for 100 children by 2012.

Are you doing your part to slow global warming?

If I saw it first...

it's mine. Try and take it away from me.

If it's in my mouth...

it's mine. I have slobbered all over it so why would you want it anyway?

Max's Maxims

My name is Max. I am a Great Dane who has lived a long time for a Great Dane and I have seen a lot during my life time. I want to share what I have learned so I asked my human to type this for me. I'm a Great Dane so there is no need for me to learn to type. There's really not much need for me to learn how to do much anyway because I have a human to do all those things for me.

In addition to my human, I have two house mates. Pepper, an old dog, was there before me and a cat, who no one wanted so my human took him in too. His name is Manny but he is anything but manly. Someone thought it would be fun to breed cats that would just go limp when you pick them up. Now, no self-respecting Great Dane would ever fall for that! Manny is one of those kind of cats but something happened to the process and although he looks like a big marshmallow, he hates to be held. He just leaves his hair all over everything but once in a while my human grabs him by his back legs and holds him down and removes about 5 pounds of hair. My job is to jump around over him or lie with my face next to his to make sure he doesn't try to escape. Of course, where is he going to go? Manny has no front claws due to some other human's cruelty. So Manny leads me to my maxim for today.

If you don't have front claws, don't try to take on the humans.