Pup loves playing with fruit

The Prince likes playing with strings of crabgrass, too

Princeton found something on the ground and brought it in the house to chew on. As I reached into his mouth, I thought it might be another piece of cat poop or some other stinky horror. Then I smelled delightful lemon scent!

He had found a small, unripe baby lemon. He LOVED it. He danced around with it and tossed it in the air many times. He pricked tiny holes in it with his baby teeth, but never bit into it. We had a lot of fun playing hide and seek with it.

Another day our Dane puppy Princeton put his feet on the trunk of our neighbor's apple tree and picked some apples to play with. We laughed to see how happy he was. I knew what he was thinking: "Wow, balls grow on trees!" The danger of letting him play with these ready-made “toys” is---he snatched a peach off the dining room table and ran around with it, thinking it was another doggy toy.

Natural cure helps sick Dane

Here’s Princeton looking like a vulture while he waits for me to fix his food

I highly recommend a set of natural supplements that are helping my Great Dane puppy Princeton with his health.

He had three bouts of diarrhea soon after we got him. The vet put him on antibiotics and worming medicine three times, but the problem kept returning -- until we tried the Giardia Program developed by Linda Arndt, fondly known as “the Great Dane Lady.” She’s a canine nutritional consultant who bred Great Danes for about 30 years.

Under the Great Dane Lady’s program, Princeton has gone for more than a month without diarrhea -- a record for our puppy. The supplements include probiotics, digestive enzymes and anti-parasitic herbs.

Check out GreatDaneLady.com for lots of valuable info about all things Dane. Even though she’s called “the Great Dane Lady,” I expect that these supplements would work for other dog breeds, too. Some are even suitable for human consumption!

Dane inherits unusual spot

Here’s my Princeton at 4 months with his amazing spot...

And here’s the EXACT SAME spot on his great-grandma Penny Moloseum of Moloseum Great Dane Kennel in Poland

My Dane pup Princeton has an unusual spot like a big, long bar on his left side. Because of this unique spot, we nicknamed him “one-banded armadillo” when he was still a small puppy.

I had never seen anything like his single stripe -- until I came across a photo of his great-grandmother Penny on the Moloseum Great Dane Kennel website. My puppy and Penny have the EXACT SAME SPOT on the left side! They both even have the same secondary spot near their spines. Of course, Penny is a Harlequin (black and white only), while Princeton is merle (black, white and grey). Still, the resemblance is uncanny.

See for yourself in the photo, used by permission from Moloseum Great Dane Kennel in Poland. Click here for more photos of Penny. My Princeton is one-quarter Polish through Penny’s son Xander Moloseum.

Princeton was the only pup in his litter with the unusual spot. It does not show up on his mother or grandsire. Princeton is the lucky one who inherited this handsome spot three generations later through the magic of merle and harlequin genetics.

It’s fun to visit the Moloseum website and see lots of cute Dane pups and champions.

Princeton is getting so big that he’s almost like a one-banded dinosaur now.

Puppy follows kibble to gingerbread house

Every night we tell our puppy Princeton a bedtime story as we lure him into the crate. A good way to get Princeton to move is to drop a trail of kibble for him. If you hold it in your hand, he knows that he may not get it right away. The trail of kibble reminds me of the trail of bread crumbs followed by Hansel and Gretel.

As he nibbles his way along the kibble trail to the crate, we tell him a bedtime story about a Great Dane puppy who follows a trail of gingerbread crumbs into the gingerbread house. Here’s the basic version:

Once upon a time there was a Great Dane puppy named Princeton. He found a trail of gingerbread crumbs and followed it through the forest. It lead him to a yummmmy gingerbread house. He went inside the gingerbread house and lived happily ever after.

Dane pup digs a BIG mess in mud

My 4-month-old merle Great Dane puppy made a BIG mess digging in the mud. His favorite hole was full of water and he was trying to dig out the water. His paws, which are pure white, were black with mud. I managed to capture it on video. After I recorded this, he ran in the house and got mud everywhere!

It all began when I made the mistake of watering the lawn a few feet away from my puppy’s favorite hole. I was careful NOT to get the hole itself wet at all… but I forgot that water travels underground to the lowest place. I heard a strange splashing sound and turned around to see Princeton digging frantically in a muddy hole full of water.

For a moment I was frozen in shock. All four of his white paws were knee-deep in dark mud. I thought: “I’ll never water like that again!” And: “I wish my family could see this!” Suddenly I remembered my video camera. I ran for it and recorded this (hopefully) once-in-a-lifetime mess.

I got some great video shots. And then suddenly Princeton took off and ran toward the house. I was so busy with the video camera that I had forgotten to shut the door! He ran inside and left muddy pawprints everywhere!

Click here for another video of my mud-puppy.

Shark attack by Dane pup

Princeton, aka “Sharkey,” loves to bite the hand that feeds him. Here he is greeting my dear friend from Texas that I hadn’t seen in years. Within minutes of her arrival, she got a shark attack from Princeton. Fortunately she is has two Danes herself, although a grown Dane is not quite the same animal as a Dane pup. I heard her tell Princeton, “You’re the first hyper Dane I’ve met.”

Too late for our friend’s visit, we FINALLY found an effective antidote for the shark attacks: mint breath spray. Our puppy kindergarten teacher recommended it, and it transformed Princeton’s behavior instantly.

The first few times we sprayed him, he had a totally shocked look as if to say, “You mean you don’t LIKE being bitten?!!” It made me realize that all our seemingly nonstop efforts to say “no,” ignore him, rattle coins, distract him, etc etc had made zero impression on him. The shark repellent that we bought is called Sweet Breath. Boy, it IS sweet to be able to pet the tamed shark with having him sink his sharp little baby teeth into me.