About dog age - The maximum lifespan of dogs

Dog's age, lifespan of dogs: how long will your dog live?

The answer to that depends upon several factors. The care that you give your dog, the quality of the food that your dog eats the kind of lifestyle that your dog lives. All these things play their part in the chances of your dog enjoying a long life.
The average lifespan for dogs is between 10 and 13 years. However, the average lifespan varies wildly depending on the breed of dog. While some dogs have an average lifespan of 6 or 7 years some of them regularly live for 15 years or longer. In general, the smaller the dog the longer the expected lifespan. Smaller dogs generally live longer than larger dogs, mostly because they don't suffer as many serious skeletal and cardiovascular diseases as larger dogs.

Dog's age - Dog lifespan information

Veterinary medicine has made some great advances in recent years, and this is one of the reasons the average age of domestic dogs is increasing. A well cared for dog that is fed a good nutritional diet, would be expected to live for about 15 years or longer.
Some dogs do live to 18 plus years and there are records of a few dogs reaching over 20 years. These sort of ages for a dog are very much the exception however.