Research published in ‘Scientific Reports’ can help identify those dogs with higher risk of premature death. The little ones live longer.
And, according to this work, small dog breeds of long nose (or dolichocephalic), such as Whippets, have the highest life expectancy in the UK, while male flat-faced (or brachycephalic) medium breeds, such as English Bulldogs, have the lowest.
Kirsten McMillan and her colleagues assembled a database of 584,734 individual dogs.
They used data from 18 different UK sources, including breed registries, vets, pet insurance companies, animal welfare charities and academic institutions.
The pets belonged to one of 155 pure breeds or were classified as crossbreeds, and 284,734 of the dogs died before being added to the database.
Breed, sex, date of birth, and date of death (if applicable) were included for all dogs.
How long dogs live
Purebred dogs were assigned to categories of size (small, medium, or large) and head shape (brachycephalic or short-nosed, mesocephalic or medium-nosed, and dolichocephalic or long-nosed) based on kennel club literature.
The average lifespan was then calculated for all breeds individually and for the mixed-race group, and finally for each combination of sex, size and head shape.
Small dolichocephalic breeds of both sexes (such as miniature dachshunds and Shetland sheepdogs) had the highest average life expectancy of 13.3 years.
Meanwhile, medium brachycephalic breeds had the lowest average lifespan, at 9.1 years for males and 9.6 years for females.
Among the twelve most popular breeds, which represented more than 50% of all pure breeds recorded in the database, Labradors had an average life expectancy of 13.1 years, Jack Russell Terriers had an average life expectancy of 13.3 years and Cavalier King Charles Spaniels had an average life expectancy of 11.8 years.
Purebred dogs with longer life expectancy
Purebreds had a higher average life expectancy than crossbreeds (12.7 years vs. 12.0 years), while female dogs had a slightly higher average life expectancy than males (12.7 years vs. to 12.4 years).
The authors note that their results are representative of UK pets only, and that crossbreeds were strictly defined as any dog that was not a purebred Kennel Club breed.
They suggest that future research should investigate ‘designer breeds’ such as Labradoodles and Cockapoos separately to account for the different levels of genetic diversity between these dogs and mixed breeds.
