Giant George (22 page)

So it wasn’t surprising that we almost missed her. As this glamorous blonde sashayed, smiling, toward us, we both, for a moment,
did a double-take. This couldn’t be her, could it? This good-looking, sophisticated young woman, with hair right out of
America’s Next Top Model
?

But it seemed it was, so I opened my arms to give her a welcome hug, as did Paul. We exchanged a glance. Yup. We both liked her.

“Nice and hot, at least,” she observed chattily, as we left the
airport and made our way back out to the parking lot. She’d
been flying for about seven hours but looked like she meant business; she was fresh and friendly but also very professional, which was important.

We now had a whole lot riding on this trip. I’d lost count of the number of hours we’d put into the application; to have it fail at the last hurdle would be pretty disappointing for us all. We knew it made no great difference to our lives, but ever
since the allegation of foul play regarding our original figures, I was angry. If nothing else, I was determined to set things straight about that.

And though Jamie was real friendly, and we exchanged a bunch of pleasantries, whenever talk turned to our actual application, she was consistent in using one phrase in particular: it was always a case of “
if
George is tall enough…”

Paul and I exchanged
looks through the rearview mirror of my car. “Yikes,” we said through eye contact. “This is pretty serious.” I prayed that George would perform.

“So, this is it, then,” said Paul, after we’d dropped Jamie at her hotel. She’d opted for the Marriott, close to my house, and told us she didn’t need to meet with us again until the morning. We had offered to take her out for a drink, or for some dinner—we
thought she might like to meet the family, or meet George. But she’d been adamant. She had paperwork to catch up on, and she wanted to get some sleep before tomorrow’s big event.

“Sure is,” I agreed, as we sat in the stationary car, in the
hotel parking lot. I was a bit worried that her declining to meet George beforehand was because she didn’t want to get
too
friendly, in case she had to dash
our hopes. “Funny,” I added, “how much all this suddenly seems to matter, you know?”

“Sure is,” Paul agreed. “Because it
does
matter. You know, Dave, I know this is going to sound a bit dramatic, but this whole thing has become a
really
big deal to me. To Dana too. To all of us. Yeah, I know that it all started as just a bit of fun, something a bit different, but now…” He shrugged. “Now it’s
become such a lot more than that, hasn’t it? It’s been really… I don’t know… invigorating? You know, creating the website, doing all the media stuff, exploring all the possibilities, dealing with the press. I mean, I know it’s not like a business or anything, and it’s not about money, but on the other hand it
is
. It’s been great doing something with so much potential. The kids are loving it,
we’re
loving it—it’s just so right up our alley. I haven’t felt so energized by anything in years.”

“And you and Dana have done such a great job,” I pointed out. “But can you imagine how big all this’ll get if he gets it?”

“Big,” Paul said, nodding. “Potentially,
so
big.”

We both sat in silence then, contemplating the concept of “bigness,” both of us still unsure, I think, what that might mean.
Might George become a brand? Some sort of global ambassador? We’d already seen what a big draw he was for children around the world. I nodded. As projects went—and the whole Guinness thing
had
become a project—it had the potential for taking over whole chunks of our lives.

This made me think of Christie, and Annabel, and the
time, and priorities. I started the engine. “I’d better get on home,
I guess.”

“Me too,” Paul said as we both exhaled at exactly the same time—like a couple of gladiators, psyching up before battle.

“So,” Paul said again. “This is it, then.”

The night of the 14th was calm and uneventful. Christie and I had an early takeout from our favorite restaurant, and then I read
Goodnight Moon
to Annabel before she went to sleep, with George, now her big best friend, close
by, heavy-eyed, on his mattress. It sometimes felt—and Christie had exactly the same feeling—that we were reading bedtime stories to them both.

I was as excited and as nervous as I’d been about anything in a long while, but I was also sensible enough not to drone on and on to Christie about Guinness. Despite her commitment to the cause—to getting George his rightful title—I wasn’t so silly as
to think my long-suffering and patient wife didn’t have better things to talk about than my ever-expanding Guinness-related plans. These I saved for when I took George out for a quick stroll before bedtime, trying to imagine what a dog had to do once he was crowned—
if
he was crowned—Tallest Dog in the World.

“Maybe it’ll be a bit like being crowned Miss Universe,” I told him as we sauntered along
our usual route, past the usual crop of neighbors’ houses, watching them doing all the stuff people did at that time of day. “Opening galas,” I went on, “making personal appearances, doing good works for charity.
You’d enjoy that. And you’re a natural in front of cameras,” I added. “Though you obviously mustn’t let it go to your head.”

George, who was making detours, grabbing the chance to get
his paws among the grass and flowers, now pulled away to investigate a late-roving gecko he’d spotted, as if to remind me just how unlikely a scenario that would be. He was a dog with his paws planted very firmly on the ground. Just as well—if he accidentally trod on your foot these days, boy, did your foot know about it.

I stood and waited, musing beneath the star-strewn desert sky. The potential
in all this, I knew,
was
incredible. Paul had it right: I felt energized too, excited. Imagine fate throwing something so unexpected into our lives? And whatever we did—however we chose to play it—
if
George got it, it was something we must deal with wisely.

We’d arranged for the second height verification to take place the following morning at the offices of another Tucson veterinarian, Dr. James
Boulay. He ran one of the largest and most well-respected vet clinics in the entire Southwest Arizona region, so, like our own guy, Doc Wallace, he was pretty busy. We were really grateful that he managed to find the time to fit us in, especially since we’d had to reschedule.

The plan was for Paul to pick Jamie up from her hotel first thing. He’d then take her straight to the vet’s office, while
I’d bring George from home and meet them there. The drive from the hotel to Dr. Boulay’s was around twenty minutes, and,
as Paul told me later, it was a pretty tense time. Jamie spent much of it on the phone to her headquarters, and the words “
if
George is tall enough” kept cropping up again. Paul began to fret for a second time. Was there something they weren’t telling us? Was another dog now
in the running? Did they not trust our figures? Would all my training pay off or had all that hard work been for nothing? Or—and this was beginning to feel increasingly like a possibility—could anything, even this late in the process, still go wrong? What about the drizzle (it was raining
again—
completely out of character for Tucson)? Would it affect George? And would Dr. Boulay, whom George had
never met, scare him?

Happily, despite his worries, Paul used the time well. Jamie, as she’d explained to him, had yet to meet a Great Dane, let alone one as enormous as George. And, since she seemed nervous, Paul reassured her that George really was a gentle giant, and that she didn’t need to worry in the least. As Jamie chatted on her cell, he also noticed something else—he could partially
see into her open briefcase. Inside was a large custom-framed Guinness certificate, which naturally cheered him up no end. The only annoying thing was that he couldn’t see the writing.

They arrived at the clinic around fifteen minutes before George and I did to help get the recently arrived
Oprah
camera crew ready, and to put Dr. Boulay on standby. Jamie was still on her cell as she climbed out
of Paul’s car and, with her hands full—she was going through a bunch of official papers—she asked Paul to take her briefcase and “don’t lose it!”

Paul being Paul, and not one to miss an opportunity, took
this one to have another quick peek at that frame. Happily, he saw what he’d hoped he would see: the words “Tallest Dog” and “Giant George” leapt right out. Clearly, the folk at Guinness—in the
certificate department at least—were feeling more than cautiously optimistic.

But if Paul was feeling calmer, I wasn’t. Though I was gratified to see Jamie grab his arm and squeak, “Oh my God!” when she saw George, I was still privately worried about whether George would come up to the mark. As I set up the planks on my truck, I was all too aware that the activity around us—particularly the camera
crew and their equipment—might prove a distraction. I was also aware, as Paul went into the clinic for Dr. Boulay, that George was already getting real excited, seeing the planks piling on the tailgate, hopping from leg to leg, his mouth visibly watering; once he could sense chicken in the air you could really see it happening. But much as I wanted him to be prepped and ready, I didn’t want
him
over
excited, as he had to stand still long enough to be measured.

I got everything in place behind the tailgate, George sniffing the air with increasing enthusiasm as the scent of the chicken finally hit his nostrils. Paul went in then, and came back moments later with Dr. Boulay, who looked very official in his crisp white lab coat. We then needed to position George so that he was in the
correct place for the ruler—a big measuring stick, around head height for George, with a crossbar that could be moved up and down. What was needed was for the doc and I to stand on either side of him and, as he went for the
chicken, to move the crossbar into position so that it sat horizontally across his shoulders.

Jamie, who was watching, would then confirm the figure the doc called out, checking
it herself to corroborate it.

It was touch and go, and it depended on George’s complete cooperation. “This had better not be the day he stops eating chicken!” I thought, especially as there was so much other interesting stuff going on. But George didn’t let me down—why’d I ever worry that he might? He
loved
chicken and he was going to stand up good and tall to get it; all the people around him
didn’t bother him one bit.

And so it was, moments later, that Jamie spoke the immortal words. Having confirmed the previous record as being forty-two and a quarter inches, she could confirm that, at forty-three inches, George was officially “now the world’s tallest dog.”

In true Georgie fashion, he wasn’t the least bit interested. His only goal at this point was to make a quick beeline for the
bit of meat he could see I had left in my little plastic box.

Jamie, at this point, had her back to George and me—she was having a quick chat with Dr. Boulay, by the tailgate, while I took George around to help him back into the truck. The box was in my right hand, and such was his determination to get close to it, he pushed his way through the gap between Jamie and me.

“You see that?” hissed
Paul, as we reached the driver’s door.

“See what?” I asked, opening the box to persuade George to climb in.

“Jamie’s
coat
!” he whispered. “Look at the back of it!”

I looked. She was wearing a smart black tailored jacket—very classy, and now accessorized by a six-inch-long line of glistening drool.

And if there was a surprise for Jamie (though nothing the ubiquitous roll of paper towels couldn’t
rectify), there was another surprise in store for us. Though it had never crossed our minds that there was another record up for grabs, Jamie told us that George was not only the World’s Tallest Living Dog, but also the World’s Tallest Dog
Ever
. Not that George cared how many records he had; he was just happy about the chicken.

For the rest of us, though, it was one great big relief, and incredibly
exciting. Paul immediately called Dana—who’d been unable to get the time off work—while I got straight on my cell to tell Christie and, of course, Shantel from
The Oprah Winfrey Show
.

But that had to be the end of us talking about it, because we were officially embargoed by
Oprah
. That was the deal—we had promised to talk to no one. So we couldn’t do anything to celebrate. We couldn’t update
the website, couldn’t tweet on Twitter, couldn’t update our Facebook status—couldn’t do anything. We had to keep mum about everything because that’s what we’d promised. It was Oprah who would have the job of telling America that George was officially the “Tallest Dog in the World Ever,” not to mention being the “Tallest Living Dog.”

It made the whole thing feel a bit anticlimactic, but not for
long. Now we had to get busy—and how. We had a trip to Chicago to prepare for…