They named their little pooch Yogi Bear, which was more appropriate than they could have imagined.
After five months with this ‘little dog’ they realized they didn’t have a Jack Russell Terrier.
Yogi Bear weighs 200 pounds
Jack Russell dogs grow to a maximum of 15 inches at the shoulder and don’t usually weigh any more than 17 pounds.
But Yogi Bear quickly surpassed these measurements and grew to be 6ft long and weighed 200 pounds.
The couple soon realized that their dog was not a Jack Russell, as they had been told, but a Mantle Great Dane.
Known as a Boston Great Dane until the 1990s, Great Danes are known as gentle giants and continue to grow for longer than any other dog.
After getting over the shock of realizing that the small dog they had originally wanted was now a giant they had already fallen in love with their Yogi Bear and there was no question that they were keeping him.
“I thought, ‘How much trouble can a Jack Russell be?’” Sue Markham told the Daily Mail.
“By the time he was five months old, he was bigger than any Jack Russell he came across at the park and he had this big tongue that lolled out of his mouth and a tail like a baseball bat.”
But a big dog comes with big costs and the Markhams tend to spend around $235 a month on food for the dog alone!
Sue told the Daily Mail in 2015 that his favorite foods included scrambled eggs and sausages.
Find out more about this beautiful big dog in the clip below, including his best friend, a tiny dog called Toffee.
I love that this couple embraced their surprise super-size dog and love him dearly; what great dog parents they are.
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