That makes Bayley 9 1/2 years old when he left. I made a quick search on Google about dog lifespan and 10-13 years came out. He left a little early but again, he lived a happy life with your family so I would say his last 7 1/2 years were all worth every moment.
Thank you for all those background info. It looks like his case is indeed rare.
Do you plan to have another one like him?
It wasn't that long ago that dogs' lifespans were 15 - 17. There is a border collie that lived to be 27 yro!
Some feel that this is due to dietary changes among other things. Too much carbohydrates.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oldest_dogs
Oh, that's cool for dogs to be living that long. You got further search result there while I stopped at just what came out of Google. 😊
Too much carbohydrate as cause of death sounds off to me. But well, even the vet can't pinpoint the COD so who really knows?
What happened was that I knew about the border collie but wanted to check first in case it was one of the 'myths' that ended up getting passed around. That's how I ended up with the wiki list. :)
I just came back from a conference with a well-known vet, Dr. Becker, and she and other vets were saying that cancer in dogs is nearly 'all' will develop it due to the high amounts of carbs in the commercial foods (I guess sugars feed cancer). That's not to say that carbs create the cancer, but that the diet feeds the cells. As well, so many dogs seem to have the same diseases as people now - notice that? Just makes you wonder when looking at past average lifespan and disease rates.
Yeah, I thought about that when you mentioned about longer dog life span before and then I thought that was the same case with humans before. I guess that is where people's claim that quality of life is degrading as time goes by...
Yes, so true @macoolette