Saturday, March 14, 2009

Oldest Living Dog

A local gal named Chanel Shaughnessy will be in the next Guinness Book of World Records for being the oldest living dog on record. The daschund from Port Jeff Station has been in a number of newspapers already. I think I can safely speak for all of Long Island when I say we’re proud of her. It’s always a pleasure when something here is deemed newsworthy and doesn’t involve an indictment of any kind.

PD*27123406

Don’t think that she’s just playing dress-up in that photo, either. As adorable as she looks, Chanel is not just another yuppy puppy. She needs the goggles for cataracts and she feels the cold and needs a sweater, just like the rest of us when we get old. She just pulls it all off with an innate sense of style is all. And in general, her vet says she’s doing just fine.

7 comments:

  1. 20? 20 YEARS? Isn't the conventional wisdom that dog/human ration is 1 for 7? That would make this canine 140 years old in human years.

    Think that scale needs some adjustment. ;-)

    ReplyDelete
  2. One of the articles said that was really wrong. What it really is, is too great a generalization. Smaller dogs tend to live longer than bigger ones. Different breeds have different life expectancies, too. Mutts can benefit from "hybrid vigor" and hang on for a long time, but that's not always the case. My sister's medium sized mixed breed just recently went at 15. Most of my dogs have been labs or lab mixes of that general size and 13 seems to be a common number. English bulldogs and Great Danes both have really short life expectancy...and so on...

    ReplyDelete
  3. "It’s always a pleasure when something here is deemed newsworthy and doesn’t involve an indictment of any kind"

    HAHAHHHHAHAH>.. HAHAHAHA.... I once had a former editor of Newsday as a professor... I started cracking up as soon as I read that... sounded sooo much like something he said in class once...

    one love,
    --reverend manny

    ReplyDelete
  4. Greetings from Sydney, Australia.

    I'm sorry to rain on your picnic, but Chanel is NOT the world's oldest dog, and needs to live much longer to justify the title. Many dogs are (or were) older than Chanel.

    Guinness Book of World Records requires written proof of all claims, which rules out many older animals.

    OhmyNewsInternational has published a story I wrote about the world's oldest dog, an Australian sheepdog which lived for 29 years, five months and seven days.

    See http://tinyurl.com/cpvx7n

    You are welcome to copy it.

    Cheers, Eric.

    [Eric Shackle is a retired Australian journalist whose hobby is searching the Internet and writing about it. He is a featured writer for the South Korean citizen reporters' journal OhmyNewsInternational http://tinyurl.com/aq7kgt
    He is also copy editor of Anu Garg's Seattle-based A Word A Day http://wordsmith.org newsletter, which is e-mailed five days a week to more than 700,000 wordlovers in 200 countries.]

    ReplyDelete
  5. No rain involved. The articles about Chanel covered that, including the dog you wrote about. But hey, right now she's got the official record for currently living dog as documented with proof, as you say. Records are like that. Asterisks all over the place.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Im sure its all down to diet. Vaccinations, vet treatments and buying ready prepared dog foods, i hear shorten your dogs life. Im currently researching this for proof!

    ReplyDelete
  7. This is nothing. I have one Chihauhau that is 25 and a mixed Chihauhau and terrier that is 20. What is the big deal? OY

    ReplyDelete