Moose – The Gentle Giant

Moose was a Great Dane that thought he was a miniature poodle because all he wanted to do is sit on your lap any time he could.

We adopted him from a family that was moving to an apartment and did not have room to keep him. When we picked him up I was accompanied by my son Tristan. We were in our large SUV and it turned out Moose filled the whole middle seat. He was 2 years old at the time and had reached 190 lbs. He was 6’8′ if you stood him on his hind legs. On all fours he was 42″ at the shoulder.

Tristan insisted on riding in the middle seat with him on the way home. Moose was hanging his head out the window on one side of the SUV while Tristan sat on the other side trying to not make face contact with Moose’s two softball sized dangling unmentionables.

When we got him to our home we immediately discovered that the softballs would have to go. The first thing Moose did when he got to the back yard was to attempt to enthusiastically have intimate relations with our 90 lb. pit-bull/boxer mix, Jack, who was so conveniently sized that Moose did not have to “assume the hump” at all. He just sort of straddled him. Needless to say, Jack was traumatized. We quickly came to his aid and separated them until we could arrange to have the softballs of lust removed from the oversized and apparently near sighted Romeo.

We took Moose on a camping trip and found out that when you have a dog the size of a small European car you instantly become very popular with the rest of the campers. The most common question was “what kind of dog is he?” I taught my grandson to reply “He is a Chihuahua………………. on steroids” The campground host stopped by to inform me that the campground did not allow horses.

Moose had one peculiar habit. It was that when he was pooping he would assume that standard hunched over stance and then walk in a perfect 4′ round circle all the while dropping his loads which would splat out like a cow pie due to the height from which it was launched. When the “circle of poop” was completed he would inspect every pile and, I am assuming here, rate it’s consistency and formation (sort of like a inkblot that the physiatrist shows me). I can imagine the conversation going on in his great head:

“Hmm, this one looks like the squirrel I saw laying on the road from our walk yesterday”

“This on defiantly has some anger in it.”

“Mom!!”

Shortly after we adopted Moose we discovered his love of Chihuahuas.

I was in my office in the back yard and saw him and Jack standing at the rear fence tilting their heads in wonder as two of the neighbor’s Chihuahuas viciously voiced their displeasure at their presence.

I went out to them and was greeted with the sight of two little mussels sticking out of a small space under the fence snarling ferociously at their perceived threat to their doggie domain. As we all know, Chihuahuas have the “small dog” syndrome that makes them feel invincible and usually results in their tragic demise at the jaws of the much larger and less patient breeds of dogs.

As I stood there, Moose gave two sweeps of his massive paw to the opening and enlarged it enough for the two yapping beasts from Hades to stick their heads through and continue their assault.

I went back to my office and looked up from my work to see Moose’s head slowly lower down to the opening for a closer inspection of these little demon dogs. What followed brings to mind the scene from the movie “Jurassic Park” when the Tyrannosaurus Rex lowered his head to make the little snack of the lawyer seated on the toilet.

As Moose’s head came up, I noticed that dangling from his mouth was the highly animated wiggling body of one of the Chihuahuas. Moose had him by the head. Before I could react, Moose flipped his head to the side and launched the little thing spiraling into the air only to grab it as soon as it hit the ground and launch him again in another direction. By this time Jack was bouncing around with the expression of “throw it to me!” all over his face.

I rushed out and put a quick stop their little game of catch and the now slobber covered and totally hysterical little creature made a beeline back through the opening to the safety of his yard. From then on they just would do their normal hysterical barking through the fence while making sure not to stick any body parts trough the fence for Moose to play with.

I wondered what caused Moose to do that as he is an extremely gentle giant and never showed any aggression to any other animal he met. (Other than, of course, the traumatic attempt to turn Jack into a bug-eyed dog. That wasn’t anger, just misplaced lust.) Then I suddenly remembered that in the picture that the previous owner had sent me when we were thinking of adopting him, Moose was sitting with his favorite stuffed toy in his mouth.

It was the “Yo Quero Taco Bell” Chihuahua doll.

This is moose watching a cat fight on YouTube