Hi! A while back, I stumbled on dog forums with breeders heatedly debating dogs’ lifespans. Most breeders argued that dog breeds with short lifespans (around 5-6 years) were a result of breeding health problems into breeds by humans and that such short lifespans were abnormal. Other breeders however argued that dogs with longer lifespans like chihuahuas (that can apprently live up to 20 years old?) were the wrong ones on a genetic level. Do you have any thoughts on lifespan?

drferox:

Well, I reckon it’s pretty rich to argue that breeding in the ability to live a long and healthy life is ‘wrong’ on some level. I mean, most of us want our pets to live a long time. If they can do that comfortably then shouldn’t that be something we aim for?

If you look at the nearest relatives, 8 years seems reasonable for a wolf in the wild. However, we are not talking about dogs ‘in the wild’, we are talking about animals in human care, and wolves in captivity might live for 12-15 years.

So it’s not unreasonable to say 12-15 years should be the target lifespan, but anything beyond that with a good quality of life is a bonus.

Which means the breeds that do have notably shorter lifespans, around 5 to 8 years old, many of which are large and/or brachycephalic, raise some ethical and scientific questions but should not be argued to be the norm for all dog breeds.

I don’t understand how something can be “wrong on a genetic level” if it’s living longer. Unless the dog goes comatose at 5 but still lives to be 20 or something like that. If the dog is healthy until near the end of its life and then just gets the usual old-dog stuff, and it lives for a longer-than-usual time, that’s good genetics.