Bathing a Great Dane... Sounds a little scary doesn't it? Especially if you've only owned dogs who are afraid of water.
Growing up in Malaysia, we always had family dogs (6 throughout the 21 years I lived there) and none of them liked taking baths. I remember saying the word "bath" and watching my dogs freak out. When we decided to get Levi I had to think of a way to get him to like baths so that I would have to struggle to get a giant dog in my tub.
Tyler and I first gave Levi a bath about a week after bringing him home. We talked about how we could make it easy for him and how we could make him feel as comfortable as possible. We filled the tub to about 3/4 full and had a tiny bucket with us. Tyler sat right outside the tub and I got in with Levi. At first he wasn't happy about it. We praised him a lot, told him how good he was and how he didn't have to be scared. Both Tyler and I always had our hands on him. We wanted it to seem more like we were playing than anything else. We took him out and dried him in our bathroom, we even tried using a hair dryer (which he HATES until today). After his bath we gave him treats, played with him and praised him a lot more.
And that was really it. After that one time he realized it wasn't that bad and now he jumps into the tub and waits for a bath. We have rubber ducks that hangout in the tub while he takes a bath and he loves those! My biggest problem now is, because he loves taking a bath so much he tries to get as dirty as possible knowing he'll get to bounce around in the tub the second he gets home.
Levi will jump into any body of water...
Tip: Putting peanut butter on the walls of your tub/shower can help!