When Denice Shaughnessy’s wirehaired dachshund Chanel died last month at the age of 21, she was heralded as the world’s oldest dog, according to Guinness World Records.

Now another old dog, one still living, is vying for that title. Max, a terrier mix, is 26 years old, according to his owner, Janelle Derouen of New Iberia, La., although Guinness has yet to certify his status.

And dogs aren’t the only pets living longer. A Sphynx cat, Granpa Rexs Allen of Austin, Texas, was 34 years old when he finally died in 1998.

Dogs like Chanel and Max and cats like Granpa Rexs Allen are outside the norm, but they may be trailing indicators of an increasingly long pet lifespan. Veterinarians say it’s not unusual for some dogs and cats to reach 15 years or more, and they’re seeing more and more pets do so.

“Just as the average life expectancy for people keeps reaching closer to the century mark, we’ll continue to see the same parallels in our pet population,” says Martha Smith, director of veterinary services at Boston’s Animal Rescue League.

The choices we make for our pets can go a long way in affecting their lifespans, say veterinarians. And so can the pet you pick.

Size matters
If you want your dog to live a long time, choose a small or medium-size breed. Longevity directly correlates to breed size. Large dogs have shorter lifespans than small or medium-size dogs, and toy breeds tend to have the longest lives of all. As for giant breeds such as Newfoundlands, Saint Bernards, Great Danes and Irish wolfhounds? Well, they don’t have a giant-size lifespan.

“The most short-lived breeds are giant breeds. They tend to live to be 6 or 8 years old,” says John Berg, a veterinarian and professor in the department of clinical sciences at Tufts Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine in Grafton, Mass. “Large breeds like shepherds, Labs, goldens probably live 10 to 13 years and the medium and small breeds 12 to 14 years. Mixed breeds in general tend to live a little bit longer than pure breeds.”

It used to be commonly thought that to calculate a dog’s age in human years, you simply multiplied by seven. But you can’t apply that formula to any single dog breed because of the variability in aging between breeds. You can make a pretty good guess, though, many vets say, by figuring that a one-year-old dog is equivalent to a 12-year-old person and a two-year-old dog is equivalent to a 24-year-old person. For every year after that, add four years.

“That formula is probably the most accurate because it does take into account the maturation that happens in the beginning of the dog’s life and then the slowing of the aging in subsequent years,” Smith says.

Cats live a long time, too. It’s not unusual for veterinarians at Tufts to see cats that are 20, Berg says. Breeds such as Siamese and Abyssinians seem to have an edge when it comes to really stretching out that ninth life, but any well-cared-for cat that lives indoors is likely to reach the upper teens and maybe even into the early 20s.

Select for longevity
Pat Santi, who breeds Cardigan Welsh Corgis in Coatesville, Pa., and currently has 32 of the short-legged herding dogs, says her dogs often live to be 18 or 19 years old. The average lifespan for the breed is 12 to 14 years.

Does Santi simply have the magic touch? Not necessarily. She attributes her dogs’ longevity to good genes and good nutrition.

Genetics is undoubtedly a part of the equation.

“To a significant degree, how long an individual dog or cat is likely to live is pre-programmed, just like it no doubt is for people,” Berg says.

With that in mind, some dog breeders are selecting for longevity. The Doberman Pinscher Club of America instituted a longevity program in 1997 to identify and track dogs that reach the age of 10 or more or whose parents reach that age.

“When I started practice a lot of years ago, if I saw a Doberman come in and it was 6 to 9 years old, I might think ‘Well, it won’t be here next year,’ ” says Johnny Hoskins, a veterinarian, internal medicine consultant and pet aging expert in Choudrant, La. “I’m seeing now 14-, 15-, 16-year-old Dobermans.”

If you’re buying a purebred puppy of any size, ask the breeder how long her dogs usually live.

Even some giant breeds are living longer.

“If they don’t have heart problems, it’s possible for the giant breeds to get up to 10, 12, 14 years of age,” Hoskins says.

Don’t super-size me
That’s because breeders and veterinarians now know that large- and giant-breed puppies should be slow to grow. Instead of high-protein puppy food and calcium and phosphorus supplements for bone growth, they advise new owners to start puppies on foods made for growing big dogs or adult dogs, both of which contain lower amounts of protein and mineral supplements than traditional puppy diets. Keeping pups slightly thin and giving them a full two to three years to reach their mature size puts less stress on the skeleton and organs such as the heart.

Studies have shown that slightly underweight dogs live an average of two years longer than overweight dogs.

“These dogs were basically underfed a little bit their whole lives,” Smith says. “They had a lifespan that was considerably longer. I think on average it was two years longer than their heavier counterparts, so staying lean, staying fit, is obviously very important in longevity.”

Pet gerontology expert and veterinarian Richard T. Goldston, in St. Petersburg, Fla., says the improvement is a combination of more responsible pet ownership, a stronger human-animal bond and better veterinary care and pet nutrition.

“If we take 100 dogs, we’re getting a whole lot more of that 100 up into the higher age groups,” he says. “Forty years ago, maybe 30 percent of 60-pound dogs would reach 11 years of age. Now, 60-pound dogs, at least 50 percent are going to live 11 years or a little bit longer.”

Goldston doesn’t see a lot of dogs reach 18 years, but quite a few reach 15, 16 and 17 years. Hoskins, who co-authored “Geriatrics and Gerontology of the Dog and Cat” with Goldston, says we probably are seeing animals live equivalently as long as humans.

“I saw in the AARP magazine that in humans now there are over 100,000 centenarians,” he says. “If we did the same type of numbers, if one could get those, I think we would have about the same percentage of animals that are up there toward 20.”

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33076736/ns/health-pet_health/

ScienceDaily (Sep. 2, 2009) — Previous studies in the field have indicated that East Asia is where the wolf was tamed and became the dog. It was not possible to be more precise than that. But now researchers at the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) in Stockholm have managed to zero in on man’s best friend.

“For the first time ... it is possible to provide a detailed picture of the dog, with its birthplace, point in time, and how many wolves were tamed,” says Peter Savolainen, a biology researcher at KTH.

Together with Swedish colleagues and a Chinese research team, he has made a number of new discoveries about the history of the dog.

These discoveries are presented in an article in the scientific journal Molecular Biology and Evolution, where it is claimed that the dog appeared 16,000 years ago, in Asia, south of the Yangtze River in China.

This is a considerably more specific date and birthplace than had previously been put forward.

“Our earlier findings from 2002 have not been fully accepted, but with our new data there will be greater acceptance. The picture provides much more detail,” says Peter Savolainen.

The time for the emergence of the dog conforms well with when the population in this part of the world went from being hunters and gatherers to being farmers, which was 10,000 to 12,000 years ago.

According to Peter Savolainen, the research indicates that the dog has a single geographic origin but descends from a large number of animals. At least several hundred tamed wolves, probably even more.

“The fact that there were so many wolves indicates that this was an important, major part of the culture,” says Peter Savolainen.

He adds that the research findings provide several exciting theories. For example, the original dogs, unlike their later descendents in Europe, which were used as herders and guard dogs, probably ended their lives in the stomachs of humans.

---

Journal reference:

1. Jun-Feng Pang, Cornelya Kluetsch, Xiao-Ju Zou, Ai-bing Zhang, Li-Yang Luo, Helen Angleby, Arman Ardalan, Camilla Ekstro%u0308m, Anna Sko%u0308llermo, Joakim Lundeberg, Shuichi Matsumura, Thomas Leitner, Ya-Ping Zhang, Peter Savolainen. mtDNA Data Indicates a Single Origin for Dogs South of Yangtze River, less than 16,300 Years Ago, from Numerous Wolves. Molecular Biology and Evolution, 2009

Dogs as Smart as 2-year-old Kids

By Jeanna Bryner, Senior Writer

posted: 08 August 2009 02:00 pm ET

The canine IQ test results are in: Even the average dog has the mental abilities of a 2-year-old child.

The finding is based on a language development test, revealing average dogs can learn 165 words (similar to a 2-year-old child), including signals and gestures, and dogs in the top 20 percent in intelligence can learn 250 words.

And the smartest?

Border collies, poodles, and German shepherds, in that order, says Stanley Coren, a canine expert and professor emeritus at the University of British Columbia. Those breeds have been created recently compared with other dog breeds and may be smarter in part because we've trained and bred them to be so, Coren said. The dogs at the top of the pack are on par with a 2.5-year-old.

Better at math and socializing

While dogs ranked with the 2-year-olds in language, they would trump a 3- or 4-year-old in basic arithmetic, Coren found. In terms of social smarts, our drooling furballs fare even better.

"The social life of dogs is much more complex, much more like human teenagers at that stage, interested in who is moving up in the pack and who is sleeping with who and that sort of thing," Coren told LiveScience.

Coren, who has written more than a half-dozen books on dogs and dog behavior, will present an overview of various studies on dog smarts at the American Psychological Association's annual meeting in Toronto.

"We all want insight into how our furry companions think, and we want to understand the silly, quirky and apparently irrational behaviors [that] Lassie or Rover demonstrate," Coren said. "Their stunning flashes of brilliance and creativity are reminders that they may not be Einsteins but are sure closer to humans than we thought."

Math test

To get inside the noggin of man's best friend, scientists are modifying tests for dogs that were originally developed to measure skills in children.

Here's one: In an arithmetic test, dogs watch as one treat and then another treat are lowered down behind a screen. When the screen gets lifted, the dogs, if they get arithmetic (1+1=2), will expect to see two treats. (For toddlers, other objects would be used.)

But say the scientist swipes one of the treats, or adds another so the end result is one, or three treats, respectively. "Now we're giving him the wrong equation which is 1+1=1, or 1+1=3," Coren said. Sure enough, studies show the dogs get it. "The dog acts surprised and stares at it for a longer period of time, just like a human kid would," he said.

These studies suggest dogs have a basic understanding of arithmetic, and they can count to four or five.

Basic emotions

Other studies Coren notes have found that dogs show spatial problem-solving skills. For instance, they can locate valued items, such as treats, find better routes in the environment, such as the fastest way to a favorite chair, and figure out how to operate latches and simple machines.

Like human toddlers, dogs also show some basic emotions, such as happiness, anger and disgust. But more complex emotions, such as guilt, are not in a dog's toolbox. (What humans once thought was guilt was found to be doggy fear, Coren noted.)

And while dogs know whether they're being treated fairly, they don't grasp the concept of equity. Coren recalls a study in which dogs get a treat for "giving a paw."

When one dog gets a treat and the other doesn't, the unrewarded dog stops performing the trick and avoids making eye contact with the trainer. But if one dog, say, gets rewarded with a juicy steak while the other snags a measly piece of bread, on average the dogs don't care about the inequality of the treats.

Top dogs

To find out which dogs had the top school smarts, Coren collected data from more than 200 dog obedience judges from the United States and Canada.

He found the top dogs, in order of their doggy IQ are:

1. Border collies
2. Poodles
3. German shepherds
4. Golden retrievers
5. Dobermans
6. Shetland sheepdogs
7. Labrador retrievers

At the bottom of the intelligence barrel, Coren would include many of the hounds, such as the bassett hound and the Afghan hound, along with the bulldog, beagle and basenji (a hunting dog).

"It's important to note that these breeds which don't do as well tend to be considerably older breeds," he said. "They were developed when the task of a hound was to find something by smell or sight." These dogs might fare better on tests of so-called instinctive intelligence, which measure how well dogs do what they are bred to do.

"The dogs that are the brightest dogs in terms of school learning ability tend to be the dogs that are much more recently developed," Coren said. He added that there's a "high probability that we've been breeding dogs so they're more responsive to human beings and human signals." So the most recently bred dogs would be more human-friendly and rank higher on school smarts.

Many of these smarty-pants are also the most popular pets. "We like dogs that understand us," Coren said.

We also love the beagle, which made it to the top 10 list of most popular dog breeds in 2008 by the American Kennel Club. That's because they are so sweet and socialable, Coren said. "Sometimes people love the dumb blonde," Coren said.

And sometimes the dim-wits make better pets. While a smart dog will figure out everything you want it to know, your super pet will also learn everything it can get away with, Coren warns.

http://www.livescience.com/animals/090808-smart-dogs.html

Some interesting findings in a new study. Via ScienceDaily: