Australian Cattle Dog “” While people looking for a long-living dog breed tend to favor those with smaller builds, the record for longest-living dog goes to an Australian Cattle Dog. Paulo Hoeper / Getty Images That’s right: The beloved children’s cartoon “Bluey” gets its name from a real dog! Australia’s Bluey, born in 1910, didn’t […]

The Longest-living Dog Inspired a Wildly Popular Kids Show


Australian Cattle Dog

Australian Cattle Dog
While people looking for a long-living dog breed tend to favor those with smaller builds, the record for longest-living dog goes to an Australian Cattle Dog.

Paulo Hoeper / Getty Images

That’s right: The beloved children’s cartoon “Bluey” gets its name from a real dog!

Australia’s Bluey, born in 1910, didn’t have the advantage of 21st-century veterinary medical service. Yet she packed in nearly three decades of life, working as a cattle and sheep dog in Rochester, a town in Victoria, for much of that time.

Bluey earned a Guinness World Record for longest-living dog and, in 2019, was honored with a mural in Rochester. The average life expectancy of Australian cattle dogs is 12 to 16 years, so Bluey was quite the outlier.