Nobody calls her just ‘Minnie’ and I don’t think she’d answer to it if they did, she is, to everybody, ‘Big Minnie’. Our only animal with a mandatory epithet. Partially it’s because we have another Minnie and greater and lesser bigness distinguishes between them but – more importantly – it’s because this Minnie is just so big. Her size is – if you’ll excuse the pun – the elephant in the room.

I’ve worked here a long time now but Great Danes remain something of an exotic novelty, therefore I ask those who are more familiar with them than I: are brains an optional extra when it comes to Great Danes, like an accessory that you have to purchase separately? The reason I ask is that I haven’t yet met a member of the breed who possesses one. Even a part of one. And they certainly wouldn’t know what to do with one if they did.

Minnie drives her dinner-plate paws into the soil, strewing grass stalks onto the wind, revealing bare, brown loamy earth. She throws herself down into it, rolling upon it, jowls flapping like bed sheets on a washing line. Her paws are now raised cloudwards, flailing with gleeful, absent-minded abandon.

Minnie runs – or her nearest possible approximation to it – and her limbs remind me of four drunken friends staggering out of a pub at the same time, all trying to get to the same destination but having wildly different ideas on how to do so. She staggers and stumbles and smiles a smile full of laughter.

She’s a hard dog to take seriously, this lolloping goofball.

Minnie is, however, a very easy dog to love. Freely and with your whole heart. What she lacks in social graces she makes up for in entertainment value. While she might never be welcome down at the country club, her ability to brighten the greyest of days make her an irreplaceable and iridescent companion.

If you have space – in home and heart – then I cannot recommend her highly enough. Big Minnie puts the great in Great Dane.

Written by Richard Grainger | Animal Care Assistant