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The Guinness Book of World Records is widely considered the gold standard when it comes to documenting and authenticating the many superlatives that fall under its purview, but it’s found itself with a bit of a scandal on its hands courtesy of a controversy stemming from what may or may not be the “World’s Oldest Dog.”
Most people associated Guinness with the beer it’s been pumping out since the 1700s, but in the 1950s, the company expanded its horizons when a managing director at the brewery was trying to settle a bet and realized there was no definitive resource book for people debating the various world records that have been tracked in an annual tome that was first published 70 years ago.
In 2023, a 31-year-old Portuguese mastiff named Bobi was recognized as the “World’s Oldest Dog” to unseat Bluey, an Australian cattle dog who’d previously set the mark to beat after passing away at the age of 29 years and five months all the way back in 1939.
However, that record has now come under a fair amount of scrutiny.
According to Wired, the folks tasked with certifying Guinness World Records have “temporarily paused the records for the oldest living dog and oldest dog ever ” due to some questionable evidence concerning the documentation that led to Bobi securing that second honor prior to crossing the rainbow bridge at the alleged age of 31 days and 163 days in October of 2023.
Following Bobi’s death, the outlet contacted the Portuguese agency where the dog was registered only to discover his owner self-reported his pet’s birthday as falling in 1992 without providing any concrete documentation to verify that was actually the case.
That raised red flags among skeptics who noted Portuguese mastiffs typically live between 12 and 14 years and were surprised Bobi managed to defy those odds when you consider he was noticeably overweight when Guinness issued the certification.
As things currently stand, the record for “World’s Oldest Dog” has been entirely vacated. There’s also been a bit of a twist when it comes to the “World’s Oldest Living Dog,” which belonged to a Chihuahua named Spike, who is supposedly 24 years old.
However, Spike’s birthday is also unofficial. He was rescued from a parking lot in 2009 before a veterinarian came to the conclusion he was around 10 years old after examining him, and Guinness has subsequently declined to recognize the record it previously bestowed upon him due to its inability to definitively verify his age.