For years, a claim has circulated online that in the 1970s golden retrievers had a lifespan of 17 years — significantly higher than the 10- to 12-year lifespan the American Kennel Club attributed to the breed at the time of this writing.
Examples of the claim appeared on social media platforms including X (archived), Instagram (archived) and Facebook (archived), as well as on various (archived) golden retriever-focused websites (archived).
(X user @ItsJuliansRum)
However, the claim that golden retrievers ever had an average lifespan of 17 years was not supported by concrete evidence.
A representative for the Colorado-based Morris Animal Foundation's Golden Retriever Lifetime Study — which tracks the health of around 3,000 golden retrievers in the United States — said via email that there is "scant data to support the claim that goldens lived longer lives in the 1970s." Due to the scarcity of historical evidence for how long dogs of the breed lived, the representative said, "it's unlikely we can draw any conclusions about lifespan decades ago."
Origin of the Claim
The claim that golden retrievers used to live an average of 17 years appears to have originated from statements one Massachusetts veterinarian, Michael Lappin, made to reporters on different occasions. Over email, Lappin said that his statements about golden retriever lifespans were based on his "personal observation" and "gut feeling" as a veterinarian who has treated golden retrievers for decades. Lappin said that he did not intend to suggest that his observations were grounded in hard data.
In 2015, an Associated Press reporter spoke with Lappin for an article about the Golden Retriever Lifetime Study (Lappin's own dog was enrolled in the study, as were some of his veterinary patients). The reporter wrote about Lappin: "When he graduated from veterinary school in 1972, golden retrievers lived 16 or 17 years. Today, it's nine or 10 years."
A similar claim, also connected to Lappin, appeared in a 2023 Slate article that also highlighted the Golden Retriever Lifetime Study. The author of that article, again referring to Lappin, wrote: "In his early days as a vet, golden retrievers were also, he remembered, notably long-lived for large dogs: He'd see them thrive well into their teens, up to 17 years of age."
Notably, neither reporter used the word "average" when they described Lappin's statements about having seen golden retrievers live to 17 years, in keeping with Lappin's assertion that his opinions about golden retriever lifespans were based in his own experience rather than quantitative data. Instead, in the bodies of both articles, the authors simply said that Lappin witnessed some unspecified number of dogs "live" or "thrive" up to age 17 in the 1970s.
However, the term "average" did appear in the caption of a photograph of Lappin that accompanied the 2015 AP article in some newspapers. That caption, which can be seen below, read in part: "When Lappin graduated from Michigan State, the average golden retriever was living 16 or 17 years."
(AP/Newspapers.com)
It's possible to interpret the word "average" in that photo caption in two different ways. Many English-speakers use the term casually to mean "typical" or "normal." However, the word is also commonly shorthand for arithmetic mean — the value calculated by dividing the sum of a set of terms by the number of terms. Because an arithmetic mean is a statistical tool for approximating the middle of a range of values, a statistically average lifespan of 17 years would suggest that a significant proportion of all golden retrievers lived even longer than 17 years.
In the case of 1970s golden retriever longevity, internet users appear to have interpreted the word "average" in the more technical sense, when in fact, as Lappin acknowledged over email, there isn't enough concrete data to support any statistical claims about how long golden retrievers lived in the 1970s.
Golden Retriever Lifespans
There is some anecdotal evidence to support the more general claim that golden retrievers may have lived slightly longer on average in the 1970s than they do now. According to the Golden Retriever Lifetime Study representative, Lappin wasn't the only longtime golden retriever owner involved with the study who has voiced concerns about the perceived shortening of golden retriever lifespans.
Some additional anecdotal evidence appears in books about golden retrievers published starting in the early 1970s.
For example, in her 1971 book "All About the Golden Retriever," author Lucille Sawtell wrote that owners could expect a newly purchased golden retriever puppy to live "twelve to fourteen years." Three years later, in 1974, the author Gertrude Fischer claimed a life expectancy of "10 or 15 years" in her book "The Complete Golden Retriever." And in her 1996 book "The New Golden Retriever," author Marcia Schlehr wrote, "For decades, the Golden Retriever was known as a hardy, active dog with a lifespan of twelve to fourteen years or more."
However, none of this anecdotal evidence proves that the breed ever had an average — in the statistical sense — lifespan as high as 17 years.
In other words, it's possible that golden retriever lifespans have, on average, shortened to some degree since the 1970s. However, researchers have not quantified that change — and, due to the lack of reliable data on the breed's longevity from the 1970s, it's not likely that they ever will.