Meet Howard — a 5-month-old Great Dane who’s not quite used to his quickly growing body yet.
“He’s all legs at the moment,” Howard’s mom, Ellen MacKenzie, told The Dodo. “He’s still trying to figure out how those work.”
Ellen MacKenzie
Howard’s gotten the hang of a few activities so far, like swimming in Lake Superior and calmly walking through dog-friendly stores with his mom.
He’s still working on sitting gracefully in a car, though, both parked and in motion.
Even though Howard gets full rein of the back seat during car rides, the curious pup likes to explore other spaces within the vehicle. If the car is parked and his safety harness is unclipped, he happily jumps into the front seat.
When the car is moving, Howard loves to stand on all four legs and stick his head out the open sunroof.
“He’ll put his head out and you’ll just see ears and chops flapping in the wind,” MacKenzie said.
And if the hatchback’s privacy screen is gone, Howard likes to lean over the back seat to get a sniff of whatever’s in the trunk. When something smells particularly good, his long front legs flop over the barrier, leaving his hind legs dangling over the back seat.
Ellen MacKenzie
Whenever this happens, MacKenzie knows that she only has a few seconds before Howard eats whatever entices him back there.
That’s why, when she looked over her shoulder one day after filling the trunk with groceries and saw a floating pair of Great Dane legs in the back, she frantically started calling Howard’s name.
“I didn’t want him to get into the bread bag,” MacKenzie said. “I just kept yelling, ‘Howard! Get out of there!’”
MacKenzie was able to get Howard’s attention, but the tall pup didn’t shimmy back into his seat after hearing his name like she hoped he would. With his front legs still planted in the trunk, he simply turned his head and rested it on the side of the headrest, creating the most hilarious optical illusion.
Ellen MacKenzie
Since the car was parked, MacKenzie made a split-second decision to record the funny moment in a 9-second video and sent it to her friends. They suggested that she put it on TikTok, and when she did, it immediately went viral.
You can watch it here:
MacKenzie captured the viral video at just the right time. Howard quickly grew too big to wrap himself around the middle headrest like that again.
“Now when he does it, he can’t turn around,” MacKenzie said. “He gets his back end stuck between the middle headrest and the side headrest. I have to stop the car completely to get him unstuck.”
Ellen MacKenzie
Howard’s getting taller by the day, which means he won’t be able to trunk-surf for much longer. But the growing Great Dane, who reminds MacKenzie of Scooby Doo, still has one cheeky car habit that he gets to enjoy.
“I found a Scooby Doo Mystery Machine car sticker, so now that’s on the back of my car while Howard’s ears and chops are out the window enjoying life,” MacKenzie said. “He’s definitely a character.”
