World's Largest Dog

I saw someone post a tweet on their Twitter about the World's Largest Dog in the Guinness World Records (Hercules, an English Mastiff that weighed 282 pounds with a 38 inch neck) last night and this photo followed:

After doing some brief research on the internet, I found out that the photo is fake. The above dog is a Neapolitan Mastiff, not English. Also, an average horse weighs about 1000 pounds and in the photo, the dog looks to be only 30-50% smaller.

The largest dog ever recorded comes from the UK in 1989. An 8 year old English Mastiff named Zorba. He weighed in at 343 pounds, measured 8 feet from nose to tail and stood 37 inches at the shoulder. Since he has passed away, another English Mastiff named Hercules in MA was named the World's Largest Dog by Guinness in 2001 at 270 pounds (below with his owner).

Goodness, Dim Sum, my old Labrador retriever, at his heaviest was 92 pounds and he was a handful. I couldn't imagine if he was twice that size! Cute little Obie weighs in at a mere 13 pounds and doesn't look like he's going to get any bigger.

[images via worldslargestdog.com and truthorfiction.com]