Most people know the pure excitement and joy they feel when first getting a puppy, no matter how old you are. When I was five years old I got a Leonberger (type of dog) puppy. We named her Nittany and she was the cutest thing I had ever laid eyes on. I had been in love with her since day one. She grew very quickly, and before we knew it she was at a mere 130 pounds. Although she was a little overweight, she was in good health. Eight years later Nittany was diagnosed with cancer. The only thing we could do was have her leg amputated, but it didn’t go as planned and she passed away a few days later. If you have never lost a furry best friend, it’s easily one of the hardest things you’ll have to go through. Why was it fair that my big loving dog had lived to be 8, where my neighbors dog was nearly 16 years old before it passed?

My assumption that big dogs live longer was concluded from one single observation, therefore it’s not real data. It has been found that the average smaller dog has a life expectancy of around 12-14 years, where the larger dogs have 8-10 years, and the huge dogs live 5-8 years (Soniak, 2014). But, there are many different breeds of dogs, this age range isn’t found to be true for all. Like most things, it is unknown why this is.

There was a study that dogs die quickly because they age fast. The researchers studied veterinary data of 50,000 from 74 breeds, and concluded that because dogs grow so fast their health deteriorates just as fast. Another explanation offers that because these dogs grow so fast, they’re more prone to disease (Soniak, 2014).

There is a correlation between the rate of growth and lifespan, but that doesn’t mean that dogs die because they grow fast. There could be many other contributing factors that weren’t measured in the study, therefore the reason where as to why larger dogs have a shorter lifespan is completely unknown. Personally, even though large dogs don’t live as long I would still love to cuddle up to a giant teddy bear than a rat sized dog.

Works Cited

Matt, Soniak. “Why Don’t Big Dogs Live As Long As Small Dogs.” Mental Floss. N.p., 19 Mar. 2013. Web. 16 Sept. 2014.