Worlds Largest Dog

In keeping with my postings about biggest dogs, here is one that is very well done, but very fake. The Internet postings read...

Hercules was recently awarded the honorable distinction of Worlds Biggest Dog by Guinness World Records. Hercules is an English Mastiff And has a 38 inch neck and weighs 282 pounds.

With "paws the size of softballs" (reports the Boston Herald), the Three-year-old monster is far larger and heavier than his breed's Standard 200lb. Limit. Hercules owner Mr. Flynn says that Hercules Weight is natural and not induced by a bizarre diet:

"I fed him  normal food and he just grew".... And grew. And grew. And grew.

The truth is that Hercules, the massive English Mastiff, was real but his time in the limelight was in 2001 when he was the Guinness world record for the World's Largest Dog.  For some reason the story began circulating widely on the Internet in March, 2007, and was accompanied by a picture of an enormous dog being walked near a horse.  That picture is not of Hercules because it's a Neapolitan mastiff and Hercules is an English mastiff.  The picture is definitely fabricated, but very well done.  The dog is about half the size of the horse and an average horse is around 1,000 pounds.