WHAT IS THE BIGGEST DOG IN THE WORLD?

There have been a number of different dogs that challenged the title of 'World's Largest Dog', but only one holds the privilege of being listed in the Guinness Book of World Records. That dog is Hercules, a massive three-year old English Mastiff who made it into the hallowed pages in 2001.

Hercules is owned by Mr. J. Flynn and his wife Wendy of Peabody, Massachusetts. Flynn - not a small man himself - weighed 270 pounds, yet his dog weighed more, tipping the scales at 282 pounds with a 38-inch neck.

Flynn says that Hercules has paws the size of softballs, but is gentle as a baby and wouldn't hurt a fly. They took him on because Wendy wanted a dog larger than the one they already had living with them - another old bullmastiff, aged two years old at the time. They realised that he was big even as a puppy, which is why they gave him the name Hercules. However, they had no idea Hercules would get quite so large and Flynn claims he's done nothing out of the ordinary to encourage the growth - other then feed him a normal diet.

It is their neighbour's son, David Delauro, who is responsible for Hercules being recorded in the Guinness Book. One day, David was browsing through the Guinness Book of World Records and came across a dog that he was positive was Hercules. But contacting the Guinness Book of World Records, Flynn discovered that the dog in the book was a 296-pound Mastiff that had already died, making Hercules the current largest dog in the world. After faxing all the information they needed, Hercules was recorded in the Guinness Book of World Records as the largest dog in the world.

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