Longevity Discussion

[sandgrubber]

I guess the PDE Blog is a little taboo here, but there's recently been an excellent discussion going on the subject of longevity with many links to studies. It includes presentation of data from Finnish kennel club which haven't been published in English, and seem to be the highest quality data available since the UK study of 2004.

See http://pedigreedogsexposed.blogspot.com/2011/10/lifespan-long-and-short-of-it.html

a couple extracts (btw, the Finns seem to report early/puppy deaths and accident deaths too, so they end out with lower average lifespan that you might expect).

Ulla Ruistola said... Finnish Kennel Club collects the cause of deaths and dates also. Owners report by themselves. Koiranetti (unfortunately only in Finnish) shows that:

English Bulldogs dies at the age 5 years 3 months (113 dogs)

Russian Black Terrier: 4 y 6 m (62)

Neapolitan Mastiff : 4 y 11 m (17)

Dogue de Bordeaux: 6 y (54)

Kooikerhondje: 7 y 4 m (29)

Pyrenean Sheepdog: 10 y 10 m (39)

Miniature Bull Terrier: 3 y 8 m (6)

Shar-pei: 5 y 1 m (37)

Great Dane: 6 y 4 m (306) (yellows only)

Bloodhound: 7 y (50)

Mastiff: 6 y 1 m (38)

Shiba Inu: 5 y 4 m (13)

St Bernard: 5 y 9 m (55) (short haired)

Irish Wolfhound: 5 y 9 m (218)

Leonburger: 7 y 1 kk (318)

Finnish Lapphund: 10 y (505)

Bullmastiff: 6 y 9 m (216)

Bernese Mountain Dog: 6 y 11 m (491)

Nova Scotia Tolling Retriever: 7 y 11 m (216)

Cesky Terrier: 8 y 9 m (14)

Maija Vilppo said...

Like I posted earlier there are 2207 German Shepherds with cause of death in Finnish KC database. If you leave out the

- 130 dogs listed as accidental deaths (averarge age of death 4yrs 3months)

- 9 dogs reported missing

- 1 dog killed by a predator (bear, wolf ect)

- 67 dogs put down for behaviour related causes (average age of death 4yrs)

- 398 dogs with no cause of death given (average age of death for those 7yrs 4 months)

- 424 dogs who are reported to have died of old age (mentioned in my earlier post, average age of death 11yrs 6months.)

You get 1178 German Shepherds dying of health related causes, that's more than half (53% ) of the total. The most common ones are:

- Cancers and tumours (257 dogs, 8yrs 9 months)

- Bone or joint diseases including athritis in hips & elbows (255 dogs, 4yrs 9months)

- Back diseases including spondylosis and joint deformities (100 dogs, 7yrs)

- Liver and intestinal diseases including bloat, megaesofagus and liver hypofunction (69 dogs, 6yrs 3months)

- Skin and ear diseases including allergies and atopies (56 dogs, 4yrs 11months )

Also likely some of those with no cause of death listed have also died of health related reasons. Granted that is only one breed in one country but the sample size is large enough.

[~Anne~]

Wow, the average longevity is rather low. Although the sames numbers are relatively short.

[Steve]

They dont really mean much though do they unless you have some kind of benchmark.

[sandgrubber]

They dont really mean much though do they unless you have some kind of benchmark.

There are lots of questions to be answered, but I disagree that it doesn't mean much. These data are much more meaningful than the normal garbage descriptions of lifespan that come with breed descriptions . . . by in large we have no idea where those numbers came from. If someone says XXX breed has a lifespan of 12 years, does it account for accidental deaths of puppy mortality? Is it collected stories from people whose dogs had long healthy lifespans? Does it exclude 2 of 10 dogs who had to be pts due to some disorder?

Longevity figures mean more to me than any other health data, particularly if they are accompanied by cause of death stats. Scandanavians in general, and Finns, especially, are notable for high standards and conscientious dog ownership, and I'd guess this data is as clean as it gets. As for 'benchmarks' . . . not sure what you are proposing. Benchmarks are usually high quality data used to make comparisons of trends over time, space, or some other dimension. The UK 2004 study, if I remember, had low (~15%) response rates and there are quite a few problems with study design (eg, no responses from GSD's). If anything, I'd say the Finnish data may begin to serve as a benchmark. It's sad that data of equal quality don't seem to be showing up elsewhere.

Unfortunately the English interface to the Finnish database is down (good of them to provide an English interface, though), making it hard for most of us to work with the data. The respondents in the PDE discussion say that everyone in the KC has internet access to the database and are encouraged to report on their dog(s) over time. From reading what the Finnish respondents report, a few things pop out. (1) response rates are high. To get >2000 German Shephard responses in a country where there are 145,000 members in the kennel club is impressive. (2) the low longevity numbers reflect high reporting of deaths for young dogs. I tend to discount the anecdotal 'I had a XXX(breed) who lived to be 15, and another who lived to 12' . . . because the people who had to put their puppy to sleep at three don't participate in the conversation. We tend to discount the dogs who die young.