Video: Notts TV’s Anna Butler meets big dog Balthazar
A Great Dane from Gedling is believed to be among the biggest dogs in Britain after growing to 7ft in length.
Tipping the scales at 15.5 st or 98.4kg, every fortnight Balthazar gets through one kilogram of dog food per stone of his body weight.
This costs proud husband and wife owners Vinne and Dixie Monte-Irvine £110 a month on average.
Now seven-feet in length the couple from Gedling got Balthazar as a puppy in 2011, and Dixie says it took them a while to realise just how huge the hound was.
“We just thought ‘he is a Great Dane, they are big’, then we saw some other Great Danes and he towered over them at quite a young age,” she said.
“People kept commenting on his size and it became quite apparent by the time he was one or two that he was quite a big boy.”
Vets at a practice in Bilborough were left shocked after they weighed the Blue Great Dane for medication and discovered he was clocking in at 99.3 kilograms on the scales.
Vinne said: “At that point people’s jaws were dropping, saying ‘my god a 100 kilogram dog’.
“We can’t get anywhere if we have got him with us, people constantly stop us for photos, most people love him.
“We took him to a carnival one year and when we decided to leave it took us two hours to get back to the car because we kept getting stopped for photos and people wanting to talk about him.”
Vinnie adds he is ‘very gentle’ with their young children and other family pets.
“We have three cats and two of them sleep with him, and we have three children aged from two to 11,” he said.
Dixie added: “Tyrion (their son) in particular likes to share a lot of food with Balthazar, he sticks his arm out to make sure he gets it in his mouth.”
Although he is believed to be among the biggest in the UK, Balthazar is thought likely to be at least second behind Freddy, a 7ft 6in Great Dane from Essex, who was crowned the world’s biggest dog last year.
