Maggie, ‘oldest dog’ in the world, has died
In the end, Maggie spent more hours of the day sleeping than awake.
Her owner gently poked her every morning to see if she was still breathing.
On Tuesday, death came peacefully while she was snuggled up in her bed.
Maggie was 30 years old.
The Australian sheep dog was considered, unofficially, the world’s oldest dog.
“She was still going along nicely last week, she was walking from the dairy to the office and growling at the cats and all that sort of thing,” her human companion Brian McLaren told Australia’s rural news service, The Weekly Times.
“I’m sad, but I’m pleased she went the way she went.”
The Weekly Times helped turn ol’ Maggie into something of a worldwide superstar when it featured her and McLaren in a story last November. Using the most popular way to calculate a dog’s age in human years, she was a whopping 210 years old.
Maggie was an Australian kelpie, a lively breed “hard-wired for hard work,” according to Animal Planet. Kelpies are known for being able to move herds of sheep by running across the backs of the animals.
Maggie the Kelpie could be the oldest dog in the world. At an impressive thirty human years of age. https://t.co/CcfXJ2L9wL
— 7 News Perth (@7NewsPerth) November 5, 2015
She was never officially declared the world’s oldest dog because McLaren lost her paperwork. He knew how old she was because the family got her when his son, now 34, was only 4.
The Guinness Book of Records acknowledges another Australian dog named Bluey as the oldest dog. He was 29 years and five months old when he died in November 1939.
Even without an official title, Maggie was queen of the farm. When McLaren’s children were young, she would wait for them to get home every day.
“When the kids were growing up they’d get off the bus at 4:10 p.m. and if they weren’t, she’d be there barking at 4:15,” he told ABC in Australia.
Most dogs typically live between eight and 15 years. Old age had robbed Maggie of her hearing, but other than that, McLaren said, she was in good health.
“The best thing about it is the last couple of weeks I was petrified I was going to have to put her down, and that was going to break my heart,” McLaren told Australia’s ABC News. “I’m so pleased she went the way she went.”
He buried Maggie under a pine tree in a marked grave beside another family dog.
“We were great mates,” McLaren said.
This story was originally published April 20, 2016 at 8:50 AM with the headline "Maggie, ‘oldest dog’ in the world, has died."