Eight months after making his owners and the country happy, in February 2023, when he was elected the oldest dog ever, Bobi died. In February this year, the Guinness World Records decided that there was “not enough evidence” to support the title, after suspicions about the year of birth of the Portuguese dog.
Leonel Costa, owner of Bobiyou will have tried to contact the Guinness to reverse the situation. But the company never responded. “I’m not just thinking about doing it anymore. The matter has already been dealt with by my lawyers and has already progressed. We have already reached the Guinness all the documentation”, confessed Leonel Costa to P3.
The tutor of Bobi stated that he waited a month, “the time we considered reasonable”, for the reaction of the Guinness to the request for reassessment of the situation. In the absence of a response, “we continued through the courts”, he explained.
The reasons given by the Guinness are the lack of chip, the only way to truly attest to the dog’s age. However, the Portuguese resident in Leiria says that “this was not an impediment to registration”. “If it were, the Bobi wouldn’t have even entered the Guinness the first time. It wasn’t even mandatory to have chip in Portugal for 30 years”, he recalls.
Despite the justification given by the company, Leonel continues to say that there are more reasons behind the decision. “There is a lot of pressure from the veterinary industry,” he added. “It’s not good that people think that the oldest dog in the world and of all time is associated with contraindications from the veterinary world.” The owner had already confirmed in another situation that the dog was mainly fed food and not food.
Since taking the title from Bobi, the record book changed the rules and started asking for documentary evidence of all the years of life of companion animals, to prove their age. In addition to this, it will continue to ask owners to register their animals, as well as exams and evaluations from veterinarians. The titles of oldest dog ever and oldest dog remain suspended and unassigned.
