A few days after I noticed the bud....

What he looks like today....

And the new growth that I'm wondering if it will turn into a bud or not....

That. Is. Gorgeous.

But either I'm color-blind (I'm not) or that's yellow with a slight chartreuse tone and white, not fuscia.

Regardless, I'd enjoy it for what it is.

And yes, that new growth sure looks like a secondary bud. You can trim those off for larger primary flowers...but I never have the heart to do so. I'd rather have numbers over bloom size.

At this point I would not lop the plant down to 3ft. Do make sure and dead head the flowers once they are past their prime.

Dahlias usually put out buds in groups of 3. The middle one comes out, then two smaller side buds form at the same junction. A lot of people snip off the two smaller buds as soon as they start to form. It will give you a larger central flower with a longer stem. If you are exhibiting them, or cutting them for a vase its the best thing to do, if you are just leaving them on the plant there is no reason to.

things are nibbling my leaves too, love your bloom!! and lol re it not being fuchsia. gotta love mislabeled tubers but that flower is lovely.

The name might be Seattle

I agree it MAY be Seattle - especially if it has faint pink lines that trace the yellow in the bud.

Though my Seattle got nowhere near 5 ft, it did do something odd this year. As I said, most of mine have the pink outline around the yellow. The ones I have THIS year have little to NO pink tracings AND as opposed to last year, one of the blooms came out almost all white with little yellow!

Common to bi and tri colors - I had just never seen that on my Seattle(s) and I have had them for 3 years. So if other buds have more white than yellow, it might well be Seattle.