Talk:Great Dane
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Article Grading: The following comments were left by the quality and importance raters: (edit comments - comment history - watch comments · refresh this page) I thought the article was strong - but the following comment cannot be true: "The large hound, alongside the horse and the raven, is holy to the kings of Denmark and England". For all I know the kings of Denmark may worship the large hound, but English monarchs carry the title "defender of the Faith" - the Christian faith - in which holiness is ascribed to God the Father, Son and Spirit. Large hounds need not apply. |
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hi, theres a little mistake in your text. "hund" is not an older version of the word hunt. its german and means dog. thats it. "visitor"
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[edit] History
I've introduced some weasel words into the History section, I'm afraid. The theories are mutually contradictory, so we can't assert any one as being absolute truth without completely invalidating the others. Barnabypage 23:30, 16 August 2006 (UTC)
I have introduced a short form English version of the history of the dog from my chapter which in Danish is called "Mjóhund & Grey - Danernes Store Hund". It may be seen in Danish here: http://verasir.dk/show.php?file=chap24-1.html#toc122 Since this is an exercise in truthful reporting of history I am happy to provide all supporting documents for those interested. Flemming Rickfors 28th August 2006 (Odinkarr 23:29, 28 August 2006 (UTC));
- actually, if you have the sources for all this information, you need to go ahead and cite them in the article. You can use WP:CITE as a guideline on how to do this, if you need help on putting the citiations in place, feel free to ask - Trysha (talk) 00:29, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
Dear Trysha, I have had a go at it this morning and have added som visual history. I have sought to interlink as much as possible to elsewhere in the Wikipedia world. There are some Wikepidia pages available in Danish and German which I seem unable to link to on this English site. Perhaps that's one of the main rules of the network. Tell me where I need to improve it further. Best regards Flemming (Odinkarr 14:08, 29 August 2006 (UTC))
- There are InterWiki links to articles on "Great Dane" on the Danish and German language WPs (see "In other languages" in the left column of the article page). The Danish and German language articles linked to this article are very short and unsourced. In any case, articles on Wikipedia (in any langugage) cannot be cited as sources for a WP article. You need to cite reliable published sources (per WP:V and WP:RS) to support your edits. Please also do not include any original research. -- Donald Albury 14:37, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
Dear Donald,
Many thanks for your comments. I am new to the Wikipedia network so bear with me as I work through the various issues. Let me start by addressing each part.
You have written:
"Some sources state that dogs similar to Great Danes were known in Ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome.[1][2][3] Various sources report that the Great Dane was developed from the medieval boarhound, and or the Mastiff and Irish wolfhound lines.[1][4] It is also reported that the Great Dane was developed from mastiff-like dogs taken to Germany by the Alans.[5] The breed may be about 400 years old.[2]"
I cannot see your sources to this but I have a reasonable understanding of the various sources we have available.
The dog, like all dogs, arise from a domestication of the wolf east of the River Tanais (Don)river, i.e. east of Ukraine at some point. Indoeuropean migration south to Mesopotamia about 2000 BCE suggests the likely way the large dog arrives in this area. This has several consequences for understanding the origin:
1. The large dog is mentioned in Rig Veda (1700-1000 BCE) in Book 10:XIV – Yama (two black large dogs guarding the entrance to the next world) and Book 7:LV – Vastopati (as a guard dog in the colour fawn) and finally in Book 10:LXXXVI - Indra (as a hunter of wild boar). What part of Rig Veda is Indo-European Northern India and what part is Indo-European North of Hindu Kush is impossible to determine. All we can say, I believe, is that the large dog is there.
2. Homer in the Illiad from ca. 800 BCE depicting the 10 year battle of Troy ending in 1184 BCE refers to dogs in Book XXIII (house dogs. Plato ca. 360 BCE in Republic, book V makes "house dogs" = hunting dogs), X, XVII and XVIII (shepherd dogs). No Greek writer refers to large dogs amongst the Greeks.
3. As Mesopotamia becomes Babylonia we obviously would expect and do in fact see the large and heavy dogs amongst the Assyrians. We see them visually year 7-600 BCE and in philosophy as the god Merodach had 4 dogs:
Ukkumu (”Seizer”) Akkulu (”Eater”) Ikssuda (”Grasper”) Iltebu (”Holder”)
This shows us that the dogs were actively breed for a working purpose and thus natural selection did not apply to the hounds.
By the year 7-600 BCE the large hounds now are found in Babylonia and in Northern India/North of Hindu Kush. However, I have seen no solid sources that suggest that the Egyptions ever had large dogs but perhaps you have a source that can prove otherwise.
Likewise, I feel certain that the Greeks also never did have the large dogs as Homer and Plato have suggested. The reason is that Plinius 77 ACE explains to us that Alexander The Great in July 326 BCE were given two large dogs by King Porus/Puru from the kingdom of Paurava. These two dogs were "inusitatae magnitudinis” or "extraordinary large". In Greek these dogs becomes known as "Indian Mastiff" (Strabo tells us about 7 BCE that it took 4 large hounds to put down a lion). The very fact that the Greeks give them the name "Indian Mastiffs" suggest not only their origin but that the Greeks did not themselves have them. Therefore I would find it incorrect to use a Greek origin I other than to perhaps quote the two authors.
As to the Romans I would fully support that the Roman had the large dogs. However, aside from great engineering skills, pretty much nothing is originally from Rome.
Lucius Giunius Moderatus Columella about year 60 ACE explains to us in De Re Rustica (on agriculture) about Canis Pugnax (fighting dogs) and Pugnaces Britanniae (British fighting dogs). The term ”British” is here prior to the first migration from Angel and Jutland to East Anglia and Kent from year 449 and 50 years onwards. Thus the ”British” are the Celts. As I have mentioned in my draft, the Celts absolutely bring along large hounds as they migrate from the Crimea to Northern Europe, Britannia and Gaul in the 5th Century BCE.
The Poet Nemesianus write in ”Cynegetica” (on the Hunt) about 283 ACE that ”Certain British send us (the Romans) a swift type (of hound), adapted to the hunt in our part of the world".
Again, The Romans are getting their large hunting dogs from the Celts whilst occupying Britannia.
Just prior the the Roman exodus from Britannia, and things are pretty hairy back home as well, Quintus Aurelius Symmachus in 393 ACE writes to his brother Flavonius thanking him for ”Canes Scotici” (Scotish hounds) which he had received.
The Romans called ”Ireland” for ”Scotia Major” and Scotland for ”Scotia Minor” indicating that we originally had Celts in both areas what data also confirms. We cannot say more than that the dogs came from the British isles and that the Romans got their large dogs from the Celts.
Therefore we have to refute the notion that the large dogs came from the Romans. Its the other way around. The Romans needed the large dogs for their entertainment at circus and forum and they breed them in 3 categories: Celeres (those who track animals), Villatici (those who attacked animals) and Villatici (those who guarded).
Moving on I would therefore argue that the Irish Wolfhound would be a direct descendant of the large hound of the Celts. Most people seem to agree with this although Edward C. Ash in ”Practical Dog Book” (1931) in the chapter ”The Great Dane” says that “this remarkable dog, the Irish Wolfhound, is a breed produced by the skilful blending of Great Dane and Deerhound”.
I can physically see from the breeding records at the Royal Kennel in Copenhagen that the original Great Dane (as you can see on the old pictures it’s more like a huge greyhound), is crossed with the English mastiff in the 16th Century in order to gain weight and mussle mass for the Parforce Hunt. If the English mastiff in 1585 has Irish Wolfhound lines, and I do not know if it does, then one could argue this if sources could support this.
Finally I am very happy that you have challenged me on the issue of the Medieval Boar Hund. John Wagner writes in ”The Boxer” (1939, 1950-edition, page 27):
”The main portion of most old time German hunting packs were made up of coarse haired, big dogs with bush tails and wolfish heads called 'Rüden.' They were supplied to the courts by the peasants in immense numbers and suffered great losses at every hunt, therefore no particular pains were taken to breed them. The Doggen and Bullenbeisser, however, knew instinctively how to tackle the game from behind and hold it in a way that kept them from serious injury yet gave the hunters time to reach the kill therefore they were more valuable to the hunt and were accordingly highly prized and painstakingly bred."
The man John Wagner quotes from is perhaps even more important. The words above are from Johann Elias Ridinger (Ulm 1698-1767 Augsburg) and he is a landscape painter with the Prince of Augsburg. We have copper engravings showing the Parforce Hunt in Augsburg 1729 and again in 1761. We have in those engravings large packs of hunting dogs. In the engraving from 1729 we have no Great Dane, in 1761 we do. The difference is the 25 pack of hounds (about 175 dogs) that arrive from the King of Denmark to southern Germania in 1741.
The final giveaway in this long riddle is the word ”Rüden”. You can see the description of this rough, hairy fox/wolf like dog above. Peter Brügel The Elder’s painting ”Massacre of the innocents” (1565) shows us a dog identical to the description, even orange-reddish like the fox.
The word is in German explained as ”männlichen Hunde, Füchse und Wölfe” i.e. precisely as we have just heard described.
Like ”Hund” in Old English and modern Danish always refers to the male, as does ”dog” in modern English, German follows the same evolution. However, in German a Great Dane that is male is always called ”Rüden”. This is because the original large German hunting dogs are ”Rüden”, not the Great Dane. If that were the case then the male Great Dane in German would be called ”Hund”. But in German a ”Húndinn” (the word taken from a letter I have from 1926 in German) is a bitch. Therefore, the genetic source of the large German hunting dog cannot be the Great Dane.
The German base dogs are mixed with the Great Dane from 1741 onwards and I am sure with Bullenbeisser. Howeer, the lines are very different from those in Denmark/Norway/England and the US.
With regard to the Alani-tribe of the Sarmatian constellation, they do bring the large hound “Alaunt” to Northern Italy, France (Orléans and Valence, ie.the region of Brittany) and Spain (Catalonia = Visigoths + Alans). Little & Malcor agrees with this in ”From Schythia to Camelot” (page 36) and says that this happens about year 360-370.
I would propose that the Dogue de Bordeaux can be traced to this migration but it would come with the caveat that Rollo brings the same dog from Denmark/Norway to Normanday in 912, and the English bring it from England to Bordeaux again in the years 1151 to 1411.
There is not a single piece of evidence that would suggest that that Franks and Longobardians would have permitted their large hounds in to Germania which was enemy territory, nor that it did in fact happen. Perhaps you have some sources to investigate further.
This is what I know on this subject.
Best regards
Flemming
- I forgot to put in the line that displays the references in the References section. Take a look at it now. Please, before pursuing your edits here, read Wikipedia:Verifiability, Wikipedia:No original research and Wikipedia:Neutral point of view. These are very fundamental policies of Wikipedia. Your edits do not comply with the verifiability policy, and I strongly suspect that they do not comply with the policy against original research. In addition, NPOV requires that all viewpoints on a subject be included in a fair manner, which generally means that no viewpoint can be represented out of proportion to its prominence in the field. I really think your whole contribution should be moved to this talk page for discussion, but I am not willing to enter into an edit war with you. I'll wait for other editors to comment. -- Donald Albury 23:00, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Looking for a link.
There was a link to a Dane content site that was removed, all-about-great-danes.com, is there a specific reason for its deletion? The link was up for months and the site has tons of breed info.
Thanks
- Yes, wikipedia is not a web directory. - Trysha (talk) 01:43, 8 September 2006 (UTC)
[edit] kyddoggen.de vs. doggen.de
It looks to me like www.kyddoggen.de is a breeder's private site while www.doggen.de is a breed society. In that case, we should link to the latter rather than the former. Could someone whose German is better than mine confirm this? Barnabypage 12:59, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
- If both sites are in german, why are they linked to in the *english* wikipedia? I'd say remove the links, it feels like an attempt at link advertising. Roadmr (t|c) 23:26, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
- Good point. I suppose with the breed being of German origin there's some case for linking to the German breed society, but for now I'll remove the link. Barnabypage 13:15, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Questionable content
While reading the section on health, I noticed a paragraph which really doesn't seem to fit. It's based (apparently) entirely on one study with little/no support, and the tone is all wrong--very unprofessional. The paragraph was added 19:52, 26 September 2006 by user 71.52.121.51 according to the page's history. Since I'm relatively new to Wikipedia, I don't want to just jump in and delete it. Perhaps someone more knowledgeable and/or experienced could take a look? --H-ko 09:18, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
- I've removed the Purdue para and added a brief reference to the research in the main para on bloat. Could someone else add the reference to http://www.vet.purdue.edu/epi/clbr.htm, please? (I always seem to screw that up. ;) Barnabypage 15:35, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
