World’s Most Expensive Dog

Look up “mastiff” in the dictionary and “large” and “powerful” will be among the first words you read. The different mastiff breeds have been bred for guarding and for fighting. The two most expensive dog breeds in the world are the Tibetan Mastiff and French Mastiff.
The largest Tibetan Mastiffs can stand over 31 inches tall and the breed typically weighs over 140 lbs. The dogs can be black, grey, brown or even, in some rare instances, completely white. Best of all, their coats shed odors—they lack the troublesome aroma that afflicts other large dogs. In both their native Tibet and the West, they have been prized as livestock guardians and have even been reported to have killed tigers to protect their flock.

At $1.5 million, a 180-pound (and growing) 11-month-old red Tibetan mastiff named Big Splash has become the world’s most expensive dog.

Its Chinese breeder, Lu Liang of the Tibetan Mastiff Garden in Laoshan near the eastern Chinese city of Qingdao, sold the 11-month-old puppy to a Chinese multimillionaire coal baron from Northern China earlier this month.

The previous record price for a dog was $1,465,000 paid last year for a Tibetan mastiff called Red Lion.