N.D. woman’s 7-foot-long dog could be record

CASSELTON, N.D. (AP) — Boomer may be a buster: Measuring 3 feet tall at the shoulders and 7 feet long from nose to destructive wagging tail, he just might be the world’s tallest living dog.

Boomer, a 3-year-old Landseer Newfoundland, keeps all four paws on the ground when he drinks from the kitchen faucet at his family’s eastern North Dakota farm house, said his owner, Caryn Weber. He can stare into a car window eye to eye with a driver. At 180 pounds, he goes through a 20-pound bag of dry dog food every couple of weeks.

“He comes into the house and his tail is so high everything gets knocked around,” said Weber, figuring that her furry, black and white dog thinks he’s a puppy.

Weber plans to send his measurements to the Guinness World Records, thinking he might be a record breaker. The previous record holder, a nearly 4-foot-tall Great Dane, died this summer.

Male Newfoundlands average 28 inches tall at the shoulders and weigh 130 to 150 pounds, according to the American Kennel Club. Guinness doesn’t keep records for individual breeds.

Boomer earned the nickname Ripley as a puppy thanks to the dark humor of her sons after he had multiple surgeries because of an abdominal hernia. He grew so fast that his stitches ripped.

The name Boomer emerged when he started using a deep, hoarse bark that can keep visitors at bay at the family farm near Casselton, about 20 miles west of Fargo.

“We’ve had potential hunters come into the yard, and a few have seen him standing there and they’ve turned around,” she said. “He’s got a pretty good sized bark, too.”

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