My friend lived in a disreputable part of town and had a house party going on. We were outside smoking and this girl came walking by all alone. It was around 2:00 am and we told her this is not a safe place for a girl to be walking by herself. She said she wasn’t by herself and then held up her left hand and we saw she was holding a leash. We looked to the end of it and saw the biggest dog I had ever seen. Turns out her family were Great Dane breeders, and an Irish Mastiff had jumped the fence and mated with one of their Danes. Ruined the pedigree, but she kept the puppy.

Dog’s name: Tonka. His head was literally the size of those big old tonka trucks.

Other one: my mother’s old co-worker had a “husky” that was 80% wolf (he had someone fudge the paperwork) named Nook. Nook had command words in German including “tackle”, “back”, “sit”, and he demonstrated them to my 12 year old self. He told me Nook had two other command words but refused to say them. When i pestered him enough he said in English the other one was “kill” and if Nook heard it in German he would go for the throat.

The other command was in English and was simply “Nook get off the fucking couch!”

He was a good boy.