TRACKING THE HEALTH OF HAVANESE— 20 YEARS LATER by Dr. Rafe H. Schindler & Sara Dellorto
T he Havanese breed was recog- nized by the AKC in 1996. Since that time the Havanese Club of America (HCA) has spon- sored major health surveys every eight years, the last being in 2012. We learned from these surveys that Havanese are a relatively healthy breed with very few life threatening issues, thus leading to the common belief that they were “long lived” as well. Last year, the HCA asked the Health Committee to research the question of how long Havanese actu- ally lived. The results turned out to be quite surprising. We began by distributing what came to be known as the “Longevity Sur- vey” at the 2017 HCA National Spe- cialty in Asheville, North Carolina. We asked only for the age and sex of dogs living in their homes that were at least seven years old, and at what age any of their other Havanese had passed away. We also specified that all Havanese being reported were AKC registered. The survey was next sent to all HCA members, then ex- panded to include members of local Havanese clubs; Havanese Yahoo groups; and anyone else we could
Havanese (making up about 20% of the total) who died around nine years of age—this is the motivation for our follow up survey, the “2018 Rainbow Bridge Survey.” You can find the full text of the 2017 Longevity Survey on the Health Com- mittee page of the Havanese Club of America website: https://havanese. org/health. The 2018 RainbowBridge Survey is an attempt to identify the most frequent causes of death as a function of age, sex, and lifestyle within the entire Havanese population. This informa- tion will not only help us learn more about our breed, but will also give us a much clearer direction for investment in future research. We hope you will take a few minutes to fill out and return the 2018 Rainbow Bridge Survey found on the HCA website https://havanese.org/ health at the bottom of the Health Surveys tab.
solicit information from. The survey was meant to be a snapshot of the Ha- vanese population; we collected data for only three months and in the end included 512 Havanese in the study. We didn’t ask people how or why the dogs died—just how old their dogs are now, and when others had passed away. We hoped we would have a large response to these simple questions, and we could answer the question of longevity in an unbiased fashion. And it might indirectly provide some guidance for future studies on how “healthy” Havanese really are. Now, you say, howold is old?How long should you expect your Havanese to live? (spoiler alert—we documented Havanese between 18 and 19 years old). When we averaged all the dogs together, it didn’t matter if the dog was a male or a female—the average age ended up just over 13 years. But the most fascinating observation was that if a Havanese lives beyond their 9th or 10th birthday, they are likely to live a lot longer—with an average age of over 15 years. Indeed, these are the dogs who live to be 16, 17, 18 or so years old. A second important obser- vation was that of a distinct group of
All informationprovided to theHealth Committee will be treated confiden- tially. No information identifying a survey responder or a dog’s name, registration or pedigree will ever be released publicly or privately. “WHEN WE AVERAGED ALL THE DOGS TOGETHER, it didn’t matter if the dog was a male or a female THE AVERAGE AGE ENDED UP JUST OVER 13 YEARS.”
T op N otch T oys , J uly 2018 • 63
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