by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist
The Guinness Book of World Records, a chronicle of unique achievements to which many aspire to be included, is currently dealing with a challenge to a couple of records that it had purportedly carefully verified. The records involve the age of an old dog.
Bobi, a purebred Rafeiro (a Portugese livestock guard dog) had been declared by the Guinness organization to be both the world's oldest dog and the world's oldest dog ever when he died this past October at the reported age of 31 years and 165 days. Members of that breed normally live to between twelve and fourteen years of age.
Bobi was allegedly born in central Portugal on May 11, 1992. He was part of a litter of four. His owners, who were burdened with too many animals at the time, decided to get rid of the puppies, but they somehow missed Bobi and he survived. One of the owner's children, who was eight at the time, verified Bobi's date of birth and long life span.
But there were some people who did not buy off on the age story as easily as Guinness did. Several veterinarians questioned the believability of the tale, and some pointed out that Bobi just did not look that old, nor did he suffer all of the infirmities that such an advanced age should have produced. One researcher noted from studying photographs that the color of Bobi's feet seemed to have changed over the years.
The Guinness organization has temporarily suspended Bobi's two records while it conducts a more thorough investigation of his reported age.
While it may not be easy to teach an old dog a new trick, surely with all of this modern technology it should be possible to make a fairly accurate determination of his age.
Rest well and be at peace, Bobi. Guarding livestock is an honorable profession, and I'm sure that you did it well, regardless of how long you served. Certainly the work you performed was of more actual importance than that of humans who scurry about trying to calculate a dog's age.
This old dog salutes you!
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