Worlds Oldest Dog?? With Picture!
http://www.heraldsun.news.com.au/com...64^662,00.html
The world's oldest dog?
By BEN JOHNSON
11jul04
JERRY may look a bit ragged, but that's because he could be the oldest dog in the world - at a staggering 187 years of age.
The red heeler-bull terrier cross may soon enter the Guinness Book of Records as the world's oldest living dog.
"It's true," RSPCA vet Dr Honey Nelson said after examining Wilcannia's pride and joy recently.
"He will be 27 in human years in August - I have no doubt at all.
"He is a remarkably solid dog for his age and has not got that wasted look that animals and old people get.
"I think it's partly genetic, but also because he's a fit, roo-hunting dog who used to catch a lot of emu and roo."
Jerry has been a guard dog for owners Waddie and Aileen Smith and their three children, who grew up with him and his 20-year-old companion, Kojack, in the western NSW outback town.
"I've got a daughter, Tanya, and she is 26 and grew up with Jerry," Mr Harris, a labourer and carpenter for Wilcannia Council, said.
"Everyone in Wilcannia knows him because he's never hurt anyone, although he does not like cats in the yard - they're his one enemy.
"He means a lot to me.
"He still comes for a bush walk with me - I take him nearly every night and he jumps up and wants to grab me on the arm like when he was younger.
"But he stops every now and again and has a blow."
The oldest living dog in the 2004 edition of the Guinness Book of Records is Butch, a 27-year-old beagle resident of Virginia in the US.
Dr Nelson rates Jerry a good chance to get to his 28th birthday following the recent check-up.
"He could push on to 28 - going by his body condition he could," she said.
"He pokes about the place very slowly because of arthritis, but they give him pain relief tablets.
"And he eats all his food with his old stubby teeth and enjoys a bit of home-cooked food every now and again."
Mr Harris says Jerry's secret has been his high-protein diet and a good bush lifestyle.
"Jerry has grown up on kangaroo, rabbit and emu as well as scraps off the table," said the respected tribal elder.
Despite his strong genes, Jerry has never become a father because "he don't like other dogs in the yard."
An Australian cattle dog named Bluey is thought to have been the world's oldest dog.
The working dog died at the age of 29 on November 14, 1939.
The Guinness Book of Record's oldest cat died at age 34.
