Daniel Strickland hears you talking about him—“You could put a saddle on him,” “He’s as big as a horse,” “You could ride him!”—and, quite frankly, he’s tired of the dog jokes. “My friends say it’s like being a celebrity bodyguard,” says Strickland of owning Tyrone, his 2-year-old Great Dane. Tyrone gets the attention and Strickland, by day the CEO of local social media software company Cloudbrain, stands by to field photographs and snack offerings.
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“He converts dog food into naps.”
At 160 pounds, Tyrone eats 12 cups of Sammy Snacks—only local food for this guy—a day. After he eats, he sleeps. In total, Tyrone naps about 20 hours a day on his very large, monogrammed mattress.
“Forget it, Marm. Your muscle tone is just fine.”
“One or two laps up and down the Mall, and he’s pretty much done,” Strickland says of Tyrone’s exercise requirements. At Fridays After Five, “it is next to impossible to walk down the Mall with him. It would be more than an hour.”
“Once you scratch his ears, he owns you.”
Great Danes are leaners, Strickland says. “He knows that if he walks up and leans on you, he’s gonna get his back scratched.” And the good thing about Great Danes? “You don’t really have to lean down to pet him.”
Sure, he’s good. But what makes Tyrone the best Marmaduke? Strickland doesn’t know. In fact, until recently, he didn’t even know who the classic cartoon character was. But C-VILLE says: It’s Tyrone’s size. At 8 weeks old, Tyrone weighed about as much as Strickland’s 9-month-old daughter does now. And no, he doesn’t put the baby on Tyrone’s back and walk her around.
