Breed · Dog

Great Dane

German boar-hunting mastiff refined into a gentle giant. “Apollo of dogs” in the fancy; a couch-seeking missile at home.

Life with a Dane is a series of double-takes: the size of the thing on your sofa, the gentleness of it with your children, the speed at which the years go. Giant breeds compress a whole dog’s life into eight or nine years, and a Dane buyer signs up for that arithmetic with their eyes open. They also sign up to learn one word — bloat — well enough to act on it at 2am, because with deep-chested giants the emergency run to the vet is a when-you-know drill, not an if.

At a glance

Lifespan: 7–10 years
Adult weight: 50–80 kg
Daily exercise: 60–90 min, gently while growing
Trainability: Good; train it before it outweighs you
Alone time tolerated: Moderate
Shedding: Moderate
Noise level: Low, but seismic when it happens
With children: Excellent, mind the tail-height of toddlers
With other pets: Generally good

Colours · 5 listed

Six recognised colours. Harlequin and merle breeding involves the same hard genetics rule as every merle breed — ask the breeder to explain their colour pairings and listen for competence.

Fawn
Brindle
Blue
Black
Harlequin

Right for you if

You want a calm, deeply gentle companion and have the floor space of a small hall.
The car, the sofa, the food budget and the vet budget all scale to giant.
You will learn the bloat drill cold and keep the emergency vet’s number on the fridge.
A shorter life, loved hard, is a bargain you accept going in.

Wrong for you if

The budget is tight — every single cost on this page is giant-sized.
Nobody can handle 70 kilograms on a lead if something goes wrong.
You are not emotionally ready to do puppyhood again inside a decade.
Stairs, small cars and low tables are the architecture of your life.

What to ask a breeder

In a prospective cohort of show dogs of eleven large and giant breeds — the Great Dane among them — bloat struck at 23 to 26 cases per 1,000 dog-years, risk rose with age, and 28.6% of the dogs that bloated died of it.¹ Learn the signs cold and keep the emergency number where you can find it at 2am; with this breed that is not pessimism, it is arithmetic.
The UK Kennel Club’s list for the breed covers hips, elbows, eyes and the DNA test for inherited myopathy of Great Danes.² Ask for the certificates, and ask separately what heart screening the parents have had — the list does not carry a cardiac scheme, so that question is yours.
Ask how the breeder raises giant puppies: slow, lean growth on measured food is the regime that protects those joints, and a good breeder will lecture you about it unprompted.

Sources

Glickman LT, Glickman NW, Schellenberg DB, Raghavan M, Lee TL. Incidence of and breed-related risk factors for gastric dilatation-volvulus in dogs. Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association 2000. International doi:10.2460/javma.2000.216.40 PMID 10638316 A prospective cohort of 1,914 show dogs of 11 large and giant breeds including the Great Dane: bloat incidence was 23–26 cases per 1,000 dog-years, risk rose with age, and 28.6% of the dogs that bloated died of it.
Great Dane — breed health and pre-breeding screening. The Royal Kennel Club 2026. Accessed 2026-09-04. United Kingdom The Royal Kennel Club The UK Kennel Club's published screening lists for the breed: best practice is DNA testing for inherited myopathy of Great Danes, elbow, eye and hip schemes.

Every source here was checked, not recalled. Where this page makes a health statement and no source appears against it, that is not an oversight we have hidden — it means the claim is not yet sourced, and the build reports how many are in that state.

Availability, registration and keeping requirements differ from place to place. Check the rules where you live before you commit to any animal — we describe animals, not law.