A GIANT 10-stone dog "the size of a small polar bear" has found a forever home with new owners in St Austell.

Brody - a white Pyrenean Mountain Dog - hit the headlines after he was taken in by rescue centre Animal Concern Cumbria in December last year.

The huge pooch weighs a whopping 66kg, stands six feet tall on his hind legs and can munch his way through a kilo of dog biscuits in a single day.

The six-year-old’s previous owners had handed him because they could “no longer give him the attention he deserved”.

Animal rehoming manager Lauren Pickthall said the shelter received hundreds of requests from dog lovers wanting to take him home. But it was Steve and Helen White who were picked out by staff – due to their half-acre garden and experience looking after Pyreneans, which were originally bred to be livestock guardians and used to protect flocks from wolves and bears.

The animal-mad pair drove 440 miles each way from their St Austell home to pick up Brody, saying "he was more than worth it". Their previous Pyrenean, called Wilson, died aged 13 in October last year and Brody has "filled the void".

Helen, 63, said: "When Wilson died, we were looking to get another Pyrenean. I contacted a friend in the Pyrenean Mountain Dog Club of Great Britain to see if they had any rescues needing a new home. She told me about Brody."

Steve, 59, said they thought they had "no chance" of getting him after seeing all the fuss made about him on social media. But they filled in the adoption application and two weeks later received an email from the shelter asking for a video call to check their house was big enough to fit Brody. Then came the invitation to visit him at the shelter.

Steve and Helen travelled up to Cumbria on New Year’s Day and spent two days with Brody, including taking him for a walk up fells in Wasdale, before officially adopting him.

“We fell in love straight away,” said Helen. "The first time we met him at the shelter, he was all over us - he is just so friendly. We signed the papers on the morning of January 3, and drove him home."

Three weeks on and Brody is settling well to his new Cornish home, where his housemates include chickens, a Canadian Goose, and a rabbit. He loves the beach, running on the sand to chase a tennis ball and paddling in streams, and is “a sucker for clotted cream - we don't give him gobs full but he will happily lick a finished tub clean”.

Steve said: “Brody really loves neck scratches and snooping around the garden - the day we brought him home, he jumped straight into our duck pond and came out green, covered in weeds.”

But he hates the rain: “No matter how much you try to get him out the house, he will just stand in the doorway.

Steve has started an Instagram account, @Brody_thebigdog, for those who want to follow his journey.