Boar-hunting dogs are an ancient utilitarian type, and go back to mastiff-like molossers and running dogs that pre-date the Roman empire.
Because their boar dogs were so often crosses of English Mastiffs and Scottish or Irish running dogs, the Germans called the type the “Englische Dogge".
What did these dogs look like? Well, they were variable, as you might expect, but none looked too much like the modern Great Dane
The dog, below, was painted by Thomas Stringer (1722-1790), and is said to be “A Harlequin Great Dane Called 'Turpin,'” but in fact the description was added well over a hundred years later, a fact we know because the term “Great Dane” was not yet in use.
Another problem: Stringer was a small-town British painter, living in the market town of Knutsford. How was he painting a German boar-hunting dog? Answer: he wasn’t.
A third problem: there were no wild boar in the UK. The last wild boar in the UK was hunted to extinction in the 1200s, and wild boar did not turn up again until the late 1980s or early 1990s, when a few escaped from a game farm and began to breed in the wild.
So what is this dog? Simple: a cross between a running dog and a mastiff. It is a broad type, and not a breed, and in this case we know for certain it was not a boar dog.
What about the dog pictured below?
This painting is by Theodor Goetz and was painted in 1853. A German painting, this dog might have bern an actual boar hound. But would anyone call it a Great Dane? I think not.
What about the dog pictured below? This painting is by William Barraud, another British painter, and in no way does it look like a Great Dane, though that is how it has been labeled. In fact it looks more like a poorly bred Foxhound mix. What we know for certain is that it was no boar dog as — again — there had been no wild boar in the UK for 600 years.
Finally, we have a photo (below), from the 1880s or 90s, taken in Paris, France. Here we finally see dogs that can be called “Great Danes.” One of these dogs appears to be wearing a cut collar used in boar hunting, and these dogs are notably lighter than the hulking pet behemoths we see today, which is another clue that these dogs are likely true boar dogs.
So now we come to the true history of the Great Dane, which is neither an ancient breed, nor Danish.
The Great Dane, as a breed, was created in the mid-1800s out of the “Englische Dogge" stock in Germany at the time (see third paragraph of this post).
The Great Dane was declared the national breed of Germany in 1876 (three years after the UK Kennel Club was created, and in direct response to it), and the Germans now said it was to be called the “Deutsche Dogge” rather than the “Englische Dogge".
A breed club in Germany was created and a standard developed by 1882.
The breed was admitted to the Royal Kennel Club in 1883, where it was officially called a “Great Dane” in 1894 (over German objections and despite no connection to Denmark).
Today’s Great Dane has not fared well in the Kennel Club, and most are dead at a remarkably young age.
None of this is deeply hidden, and if one person wants to point to a pie-bald dog on an Egyptian tomb and proclaim it a “Dalmatian,” and another wants to point to the same picture and proclaim it a “Great Dane,” there is no use in arguing, as it changes nothing. Some people, I am told, still believe in trickle-down economics!
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