Scientific Results: How can we achieve more accurate reporting of average dog lifespan?
October 11, 2024 - 7 minutes readThis month, we are featuring our team studying all the environmental factors in dogs’ lives. Dr. Audrey Ruple leads this team at the Department of Population Health Sciences, VA-MD College of Veterinary Medicine at Virginia Tech. This team has innovative ways to look at environmental factors, which they consider to be everything outside of the dogs. That includes diet and exercise, as well as the built environment, chemical environment, natural environment, and drinking water.
You can read more about this team of researchers here.
Dog Aging Project Team Members:
Courtney L Sexton
Audrey Ruple
Where was it published?
Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association.
What is this paper about?
In recent years, there have been popular media reports claiming that companion dogs are living shorter lives than they used to. Given the many advances in veterinary care and diagnostics, more familial relationships people build with companion dogs today, and improved understanding of dogs’ cognition and behavior, this didn’t seem to make sense to us. So, we decided to take a closer look at the published literature to ensure our opinion aligned with the available evidence. When we set out to conduct a systematic review of the studies on dog lifespans, we found that there were several limitations to evaluating them because of many inconsistencies in the ways mortality data have been collected, reported, and analyzed.
However, we found that reports from these existing datasets could be used to make a cursory judgment (at the very least, more accurate than what has been reported in the popular press) of whether there has been an overall increase or decrease in dog life expectancy over the last 40 years. As it turns out, the trend that we see in studies using available data on dog mortality around the world indicates that the average dog’s lifespan appears to be higher today than in the mid-1980s.
What do these results mean for me and my dog?
Great news: it appears that on average, dogs’ lives aren’t getting shorter! While we’re really glad to see this, the fact that this basic understanding of dogs’ life history is still a complicated question is problematic. This is because we don’t have a standardized method for capturing and reporting mortality data, which is why large-scale projects like the Dog Aging Project are so important. Every dog who is a part of Dog Aging Project helps us to better understand more about their lifespans. With this information, we can continue our investigations into improving dogs’ quality of life across life stages.
Just as in people, injuries, diseases, and genetic disorders can impact dogs’ lifespans. But, if we as their caretakers are mindful of providing our dogs with safe environments and keeping current on preventative care, dogs can live relatively long, healthy, and happy lives (though unfortunately, never as long as we’d wish!).
Where can I learn more?
Sexton CL, Ruple A. How can we achieve more accurate reporting of average dog lifespan? J Am Vet Med Assoc. 2024 Jun 12;262(9):1-5. doi: 10.2460/javma.24.01.0068. PMID: 38866045.
Abstract
Despite major advances in our understanding of dogs as a biological system (including genetics/epigenetics, physiology, cognition, and behavior), the veterinary field lacks consensus around a critical piece of information: namely, the average lifespan/life expectancy of a domestic dog. This deficiency is due in part to unavailable and/or inconsistent collection of dog mortality data. In an effort to review historical and current reports of dog lifespan to determine whether the domestic dog’s lifespan has changed over time, we found that incongruous data were prohibitive to conducting a formal meta-analysis of dog lifespan reports. However, in examining several different kinds of dog aging and mortality studies covering a span of about 40 years (1981 to 2023), it seems apparent that the median lifespan of domesticated dogs has not recently decreased, as has been reported in the popular press, but rather has increased steadily over that time frame. Still, assessing the validity of these numbers is a challenge, as methodology, cohort, and covariates (such as weight, breed, etc) vary from study to study. We therefore recommend the adoption of a comprehensive, standardized method for reporting and recording dog mortality so that a more accurate understanding of dogs’ average lifespan can be obtained in the future.
Tags: Scientific Results, Women in Science