Giant George

by Dave Nasser

  But two days later, right after I’d FedEx’d the forms, a new Guinness title was awarded. It seemed our friendly rivalry with Boomer was already consigned to history. The title of World’s Tallest Dog now apparently belonged to another Great Dane.

  Not that we needed to worry—it didn’t exactly change things. We’d all of us checked the stats for the other dogs who’d been entered and, by our estimates, George was taller than all of them.

  But even if that hadn’t been so—if we’d somehow done the measurement wrong—we were primarily in it for the fun. This was a case of may the best man, or dog, win. What other approach was there to take about such things?

  So we thought we’d make contact with the owner. We’d had great fun chatting to Boomer’s owner, hadn’t we? It would be great to connect and share stories about our giant pets the way owners of same-breed dogs tend to like to do. Whatever happened with the title, it was now out of our hands.

  But we never did get in touch. I got a call on my cell phone, from Dana, the next day.

  “You should get on George’s website and check out the guest book,” she told me. “There’s something really unpleasant going on.”

  Most of us live our lives fairly peaceably. We have family and friends, and a bunch of work colleagues and acquaintances, and most of us never really have to concern ourselves with people we don’t know.

  But put your head above that parapet—as anyone famous would probably tell you—and suddenly, to some extent, you become public property. People who’ve never met you feel they have the right to pass judgment, or at the very least to comment on what you say and do.

  That we’d put ourselves above the parapet wasn’t in question. We’d set up a website, we had Facebook, we had Twitter, we had YouTube, and through them we connected with a whole bunch of people, ninety-nine percent of whom were exactly like we were: dog lovers, pet owners, interested in connecting and making friends.

  If you’re a pet owner yourself, you’ll probably know this intuitively. You become part of a community of other pet owners and like to share all the things you have in common. This community is everywhere: from the friends we still make at our local dog park, to the information that gets exchanged on all the pet-interest websites, to the forums and online communities that exist so that there are places folks can go to share anecdotes and questions about their particular breeds. Our website, plus Facebook, and Twitter, and the visits, were a part of that same human process of people enjoying connecting with like-minded souls.

  But perhaps we had all been incredibly naive. Because it seemed that, despite our friendly intentions, we’d stumbled across a dark side to our Giant George project, whose existence had never once crossed our minds.

  One of the most popular and useful features of George’s website was the guest book where people could write comments and questions to George. It had been popular right off the bat. George (or, rather, one of us) would post something up there and folks visiting the site would read about it and comment. At any one time, there were plenty of visitors, and all sorts of lively dog-related conversations would go on. It was one of the fun parts of having the website: seeing this fast-growing global community of dog lovers coming together through becoming fans of George.

  But there now, for all to see, were these really spiteful comments, saying not-so-nice things about me, the Giant George Team and, most unkindly, we thought, about George himself. These comments questioned his height and weight and said he couldn’t possibly be that tall or big. In short, they said we, and he, were frauds, and that we were exploiting George for the publicity.

  To say we were aghast would be to put it mildly. Why would anyone in their right mind want to do that? I simply couldn’t believe (and neither could Paul or Dana) that someone would have such a vested interest that they would go to these ridiculous lengths to trash my beloved dog. Going for the Guinness record was supposed to be fun, wasn’t it? But this whole thing was suddenly making it anything but. What would cause a person to behave this way? You hear stories about such people, of course, but to witness it firsthand was a reality check. Were there really people who were so bitter and mean-spirited that they would publicly belittle another person—another family—in this way? But it was a public forum—that was the whole point of the guest book—so what could we do?

  We kept a close eye on it and tried to find out what was happening; with comments beginning to appear across all our social media, we started building a picture and getting clues. The final giveaway was a post that we found on a blog—a full two-page rant—almost all of it labeling George a fraud. Now the whole unpleasant business fell into place: the blog belonged to one of the people whose dog was vying for the same Guinness record that we’d submitted George for.

  We decided that perhaps this was just a one-off, that they’d been having a particularly bad day and decided to take it out on their perceived Guinness “rivals.” It wouldn’t have been the first time that sort of thing had happened, and the anonymity of the virtual world makes unpleasantness so easy. Perhaps the best thing would be to give them the benefit of the doubt, trusting that they’d realize they’d made a bit of a fool of themselves, and perhaps, having done so, they’d go away.

  Within days we realized that this person was intent on some sort of mission. More comments began popping up everywhere. There was one on our YouTube video of George playing with Boomer, and several more in the comments boxes beneath newspaper articles that had been published online as well.

  There was obviously nothing we could do about the latter, but one thing we could do was close the guest book on the Giant George website. It was such a shame, because we’d met all sorts of great people from around the world there, but we were also very conscious that many of George’s most devoted fans were children. The last thing they needed was to log on and witness some adult, but very childish, mudslinging.

  On a personal level, we felt under attack too. Particularly Christie, who, just like every other dog “mom,” was enraged that there was someone out there dissing her cherished pet. Suddenly, our “bit of fun”—so recently the cause of some spirited marital debates about priorities—had become something quite different: a priority in itself. Now it felt like George getting hold of that title was no longer something we did for a laugh, but something we needed to do, we all agreed, to silence this person who was so intent on bad-mouthing us.

  I was also angry. What right did anyone have to talk to people they didn’t know in such an unpleasant way? Christie and I were now united. We must refocus our efforts to get that Guinness World Record and put an end to all the spiteful allegations.

  The next day, therefore, I telephoned the people at Guinness to let them know that we had recently sent in our package, and we’d be grateful if George could be considered for the title. There was nothing else we could do now but wait.

  We then tried to put the whole record-breaking business right out of our minds, and mostly we succeeded. Paul and Dana, as promised, took over the website and Facebook, while Christie and I took some time out to immerse ourselves in family. After all, that was what was most important to both of us, and the only thing, really, that was important to George. It didn’t mean a thing to him how big or small he was. He was much more concerned with the really pressing stuff of life, like finding new ways to sneak bits of our dinners off our plates, or discovering how to wheedle an extra dog treat out of visitors.

  He’d also found a new thing to enjoy after Annabel was born. Even if he didn’t care for her, he loved her dolls. Being a girl, she’d already amassed around half a dozen, mostly rag dolls and cloth dolls, which she was still too young to play with, so they sat in a smiling row close to her crib. Right away, George took a shine to one of them in particular, a green stuffed doll that played a nursery rhyme when it was squeezed. George loved this doll right from the minute he saw it, and any time he got a chance he would take it off somewhere and place it between his two front paws so it played him the tune. It was
almost as if it was some kind of security blanket. We’d often find him dozing with it nestled between his paws.

  And we weren’t about to stop him—okay, so it was a present, but we figured we could get another one for Annabel easily enough. It was a period of such big adjustment, for him as well as us, that if it made him happy, then it was just fine by us.

  And our patience was finally rewarded, come the holidays, by a softening in George’s attitude toward Annabel herself. He celebrated Christmas morning by, for the very first time, not only acknowledging her presence in our lives, but also licking her hand. Bingo! We’d knew we’d cracked it at last.

  If initially it felt like George had made the decision to like her, as the days passed, it became so much more than that. We felt we could see his mind working; not only had she now been accepted into our “pack,” it seemed he also understood that she was the pack’s youngest member, and so was in need of, and due, our boy’s affection and protection. We couldn’t have had a better Christmas present.

  And the new year brought good news as well. I took a call from Paul right after the holidays were over. “Guess what?” he announced. “This ball is still rolling. We just hit one thousand fans on Facebook!”

  I knew Paul and Dana had been doing great work, keeping both the website and social media sites fresh and active. They’d both post any news about what George had been up to, as well as photos and videos and interesting links. They trolled the Internet for interesting dog-related facts and had lately been posting George’s thought for the day—most often great quotes from inspirational figures, and links to things and places and sentiments that mattered.

  No sooner had these updates been posted, Paul told me, than they’d find them commented on by a hundred plus people, from across the globe. But a thousand fans? It seemed pretty incredible. “And growing daily,” Paul added, “as are the followers on Twitter. Plus we are now up to seveny-five thousand hits on our video with Boomer on YouTube.”

  No, George didn’t hold any world records yet, but if it was popularity they were measuring, rather than inches, he’d have been a winner by a mile. The bottom line was that George was a very special dog, and not just in terms of his stature. If my childhood dog, Apollo, could wow the crowds with his mad antics, George seemed to wow everyone just by being George. No, he didn’t goof around, or perform tricks—he didn’t need to. Just being in his presence seemed to do something to people. There was wonderment, obviously, at a dog who had to bend down to pinch a steak off a kitchen counter, but there was also something so special about this amazing boy of ours. For want of a better word, we called it his “aura.” It was, we decided, the same kind of special something that separated true movie stars from all the other actors.

  And whatever it was, George enjoyed it. You could take him pretty much anywhere around people and he was happy. He might shower everyone around him in drool (as a consequence we never traveled anywhere these days without either one of our “drool towels” or rolls of paper towels), but he was never once cranky or uptight, or skittish or bad-tempered—no wonder he was so much in demand.

  During the holidays things had been pretty quiet—just as we’d planned—but after the break things really started to pick up. We got a call from the drug company Pfizer’s Animal Health Division. Their annual convention was right here in Tucson and they wanted to know if George could come over to the hotel to do photos with the attending veterinarians.

  The organizers were very professional from the start, and set it up so that George would pose with one small group of doctors at a time. We did this a few times to accommodate all the attending doctors, and George didn’t seem to mind in the least. Far from it—he seemed to have this sixth sense about when the “say cheese!” moment happened. He’d always pose with such grace and stand perfectly still.

  Back online, we knew things were still growing exponentially. During the month of January our website had over thirty thousand visitors—an absolutely incredible number. And if we’d been thrilled to reach the magic number of one thousand fans on Facebook, we had even more excitement in store. By the end of the second week in January, we hadn’t just doubled that figure—we were getting close on reaching five thousand.

  Yes, we were responsible grown-ups with day jobs, but we were all like a bunch of overexcited kids. Dana would go peek at Facebook when she should have been working, and fire off an e-mail to Paul and me: “4,974!” She didn’t need to put anything else in the e-mail—we knew what the numbers referred to.

  And then that evening, she checked again, grabbed her cell and called Paul. “Are you watching?” she wanted to know, before Paul could even say hello.

  “Of course I’m watching!” he answered. “4,997!”

  “You know what?” said Dana. “If anyone could see us, up at eleven at night, hunched over our computers, doing what we’re doing, they’d think we were mad!”

  “Yeah, but isn’t it fun?” Paul started to reply. “Yey! Five thousand! We got it! We’re rocking!”

  And it didn’t stop there. By the last day of January, George had a staggering ten thousand Facebook fans. And it wasn’t just the number of people that amazed me; it was their enthusiasm, their interest, their real passion.

  But if George’s fans were on board, it seemed the Guinness organization was not. We got a call from them, right at the beginning of February. “I’m sorry,” the man said, “but there’s a problem.”

  CHAPTER 18

  Every Dog Has His Day

  I took the call and it left me speechless. The man was British—I could tell right away from his accent—and he explained that he was calling from London, from the Guinness World Records headquarters, in fact.

  “A problem?” I asked him, once he’d explained who he was. “I don’t understand. What sort of problem?”

  “I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about,” he quickly reassured me. “It’s just that we’ve had someone get in touch by letter, and it seems there’s some controversy about George’s recorded height.”

  I was stunned, but at the same time alarm bells began ringing. Would someone really go to such lengths to deny George the title? Was this the same person who’d made all those comments? It was incredible. Yet it seemed to be happening, even so. “What sort of controversy?” I asked him. “We followed all your protocols to the letter.”

  “I’m sure you did,” he said soothingly. “It’s just that someone has challenged the data you sent in and—”

  “Challenged?” I asked him, my mind whirling now. How could someone be so fixated on this that they’d make so much effort to dispute the results? What had we ever done to them? “Who has challenged it?” I wanted to know. “How? On what grounds?”

  The man seemed anxious to reassure me I mustn’t worry, but at the same time he wasn’t about to tell me. “I’m sure you’ll understand,” he said, “and I’m really very sorry, but it’s important that we are seen always to follow up on this sort of thing. All we need is—”

  I interrupted because I knew what was coming. “For George to get measured again, right?”

  “Exactly,” he confirmed. “We’re going to need a second measurement from a different veterinarian, just so we can corroborate your figures. Can you arrange that, do you think? And for the measurement we’ll send one of our own adjudicators to verify the measurement and act as a witness. Is that okay?”

  I said yes because, really, what choice did we have? We knew we’d done everything completely to the letter, but if they needed for us to do it all again, then so be it. It really didn’t matter who was so intent on causing trouble. We certainly were living and learning!

  We arranged that we’d plan something for February 10, when their adjudicator, Jamie Panas—who’d be flying all the way to Tucson from New York—could come down and confirm that we had measured George correctly.

  “Unbelievable” was Christie’s opinion, when I called and told her. “And kind of sad too, don’t you think?”

  �
�Sad?” I answered.

  “Yes,” she said. “I think it is sad. I mean, sad that this bitter person is so completely stuck on all this that they’d go to such lengths to cause trouble for us. He’s just a pet. They all are. Like it really matters so much to them that they even write to Guinness? Like they really have so little else in their lives? It’s incredible, that’s what it is.”

  But, incredible as it was, there was more incredulity to come.

  “ ‘That’s Incredible!’”

  I’d listened hard, but wasn’t sure that I’d heard right. “I beg your pardon?”

  “ ‘That’s Incredible!’” the woman who’d called my cell said again. “You remember we spoke on the phone a couple months back? About George guesting on one of our ‘That’s Incredible!’ shows?”

  I laid down my drill and carefully climbed down my ladder. It was February 11, and I was doing some work on a house that I was selling, a few miles from where we lived, close to downtown. I had a guy working with me on some wiring that needed doing, and what with the noise he was making across the room from me, I’d missed the first couple of things the woman had said. But now I could hear and realization kicked in. It was Shantel, the producer I’d talked to before, from The Oprah Winfrey Show.

  “We’re busy preparing the next one,” she explained again. “And we wondered how you felt about bringing George along to guest on the show.”

  George himself ambled up now and snorted at my cell. Was he really so clever that he could sniff the smell of celebrity? The whiff of fame? The heady scent of success? I smoothed a hand over his velvety head. The whole idea of George “guesting” on a TV show seemed so funny. “That sounds great in theory,” I said. “Except you know what’s been happening with all that, right?”