Meeps83 (10-28-2018)
I work in research. Yeah, that's a really confusing article in terms of how they report sample sizes. Looks like they started with a sample of 33,320 dogs, and had some demographic data about them. But it looks like they only had mortality and coat color data on an extremely small fraction of dogs (176 is what they report, but 139+34 is 173, so maybe coat color was missing for 3 cases?). Real-life data tends to be messy. You typically don't see strong trends or have the ability to draw any strong conclusions based on a sample of 176 dogs, let alone 34 chocolate labs. I would ideally want a sample with several hundred dogs, with at least a couple hundred of each color. I'm highly skeptical coat color is in any way related to longevity.
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Meeps83 (10-28-2018)
Another thing to wonder, were the chocolates really chocolate? Or were some silver, but registered as chocolate? The dilute gene that gives us silver (charcoal and champagne too) is present in several breeds and linked to health issues, especially skin/coat issues.
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Charlotte K. (10-27-2018), Meeps83 (10-28-2018)
That the chocolates might be silver was part of my thoughts on this, too.
However, I also think that we have to remember the relatively small population of the UK compared to the world, or even the US. The chocolate gene pool might have been small and closed, due to rabies quarantine regulations before the pet passport scheme. I remember a chocolate Lab pup bring exported from New Jersey to the UK almost 20 years ago. It was hard to get all the regulations covered, and it was expensive.
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