Dog Daily News

This dog is 25? (Oliver Lang/AFP/Getty Images)

A woman in German claims that her Bernese mountain dog, Penny, is 25. If that’s true, she is by far the oldest dog in the world. (Older even than Chanel, who wore that crown until a couple of weeks ago, when she died at 21.) The story was in the Baltimore Sun today, so we figured it simply had to be true. We dogs were about to email Penny to ask for the secret to her fountain of youth, when ever-wise staffer Jasper suggested we find out more about the lifespan of the Bernese mountain dog. Being illiterate, he was no longer of use to this mission, so he sat looking at a picture book while those of us with the ability to surf the internet discovered a very interesting factoid.

It seems, according to DogBreedInfo.com, that Bernese mountain dogs have a lifespan of a mere six to eight years. The site says the lifespan has decreased recently from 10-12 years down to this paltry half dozen to eight years. That is sad, and we wonder why that’s happening, but that’s not the focus of today’s little story.

So now here we have a giant breed, with a life expectancy of — and this is being extremely generous — a maximum of 12 years. And her person, Virginia Wulf, claims Penny is more than double that. And you see a picture of her above, looking a little scruffy, but awfully active for an ancient dog. And we wonder: Is this a miracle? Do we need to find out what kind of yogurt Penny eats? Or is Virginia Wulf simply crying wolf? We’ll try to keep you posted.