We adopted Dottie in 2002. We had been in our house for less than 2 months. We had recently adopted our first dog, Sydney, from a rescue shelter. Courtney got a phone call from a Great Dane rescue looking to place an older Dane. Dottie’s owner told us that if we weren’t going to adopt her then he was going to turn her over to the pound. He was being transferred to Kentucky for his job and didn’t want to make the trip with her. So, that afternoon we packed Dottie into Courtney’s Honda Civic along with Sydney.

We were originally told that Dottie was 4. But after awhile her owner let it slip that she was closer to 5. A Dane’s average life expectancy is somewhere in the neighborhood of 8 years. We wanted her to finish out her golden years with us.

Through the years we had our good times and bad times. When she came home with us she was an overweight 140 lbs dog. Within a few years we had her down to 100-110 lbs. Her weight loss was mostly due to her not acting her age at all. She and Sydney ran around the yard all year long.

In the last few years her hips started to go. It’s typical for large dogs, especially Danes, to have hip displagia. She became stiff when it got cold out. She burned through many dog beds over her life. But through it all, she continued to get up every morning and make it outside.

I came home tonight to find Dottie not confined to the kitchen as usual. I also came home to find some sort of “mess” on the kitchen floor, also quite usual in our house. But what I wasn’t prepared for was the condition Dottie was in. Something was wrong and it was obvious.

We put Dottie to sleep tonight. She was 11 years old. She had lived longer than she was expected to. She was a big dog, stinky, stubborn, and beautiful. We always enjoyed watching her lay in the sun during the summer.

She was our Dane. We loved her. We miss her.