One of the most wonderful things in life is the joy of having a dog. Dogs, however, inevitably hurt us. Not physically, mind you, but deep inside our hearts. For when we get a dog, we are painfully aware of the inevitability of our friends’ short life, yet are determined to attach our hearts to them in the most intimate ways possible. The one fruitless wish for any dog owner is that our dogs will live forever. Bobi, the purebred Rafeiro do Alentejo, (probably) won’t live forever, but he’s giving it his best shot.
Bobi Just Won the Award for the Oldest Dog to Ever Live
This past weekend, Bobi the dog won an award that any dog owner would be happy to have: the oldest dog to ever live. Bobi is a purebred Rafeiro do Alentejo, a type of Portuguese livestock guardian dog that gets its name from a southern town in Portugal, where the dog was first bred. For the first time in modern recorded history, Bobi broke the record for the oldest dog to ever live. Clocking in on February 4th, 2023, Bobi was an esteemed 30 years and 269 days old!
“It’s a feeling of pride we can’t explain,” Bobi’s owner Leonel Costa, 38, said. “Some people told us we wouldn’t make it… but we knew Bobi’s age and were sure the exams would only prove what we already knew.”
The Age
The record was recorded by the Guinness Book of World Records, meaning it was officially recorded and marked down for future reference. Before Bobi, the record holder was a pup named Bluey, who was born in 1910. Bluey lived for 29 years and was put to sleep on November 14th, 1939, when he was 29 years and five months old.
How Old is Bobi in Human Years?
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Bobi is so old that putting in the “30” on Pedigree’s online calculator returns an error message! Because dogs don’t age linearly (which is why the seven human years per dog year isn’t all that accurate), getting a human equivalent for Bobi is a bit tough. Another way of calculating Bobi’s age is to assume the first year of a dog’s life as 15 human years, the second year as an additional 9 years, and subsequent years as around 5 years. Using that math, Bobi is a whopping 164 in human years. It’s almost too crazy to believe!
Dogs almost never live past 20 years old, so seeing an old pup that has already cleared 30 is rather astonishing. Bobi is a breed of dog called a Rafeiro do Alentejo. The breed is known to be relatively long-lived and often lives to be between 12 and 14 years old. Bobi may have increased the medium age by quite a substantial margin, however!
Outside of his breed, Bobi’s age is likely the result of a few notable factors. First, his owners never kept him chained up or fed and let him live a pretty free life in the countryside. Even crazier, Bobi’s meals were almost always human food, not kibble! If that isn’t a bad omen for the kibble industry, we don’t know what is.
“What we ate, they ate too,” he said. “Between a can of animal food or a piece of meat, Bobi doesn’t hesitate and chooses our food.”
The Age
Whatever the reason, Bobi’s owners hope to keep him around for as long as possible, provided he is happy and healthy. Bobi may go on and break some more records soon!
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