Five ways to help your dog live longer

1. Keep your dog lean. This is the big one.

If you do one thing from this list, do this one — it has the best evidence of anything on the page. Purina ran a study that would be hard to repeat today: 48 Labrador retrievers, paired off, with one dog in each pair fed 25% less food than its partner from eight weeks of age until the end of its life. Everything else was kept the same. The restricted dogs had a median lifespan of 12.9 years against 11.1 years for their pair-mates — close to two extra years — and they showed the signs of chronic disease later, including a markedly later onset of osteoarthritis.

That is a lifespan effect from portion size alone, and no supplement in this category has produced anything comparable. In practice: learn to body-condition score your dog instead of trusting the bag's feeding guide, which is written for an average dog that may not be yours. You should be able to feel the ribs easily under a thin layer of fat, see a waist from above and a tuck-up from the side. And weigh the food — "a scoop" drifts upward over years.

2. Move them every day

Regular, moderate exercise maintains muscle mass, and muscle is what supports arthritic joints. It also helps with weight, sleep and behaviour — one of the few things that improves both lifespan and the quality of it.

Consistency beats intensity: two moderate walks a day are worth more than one heroic weekend hike, and for an older or stiffer dog several short outings are far kinder than one long one. Swimming builds muscle without loading the joint hard. If your dog is limping, get it looked at before you add exercise, not after.

3. See your vet before there is a problem

Most of what shortens a dog's life is treatable when caught early, and expensive or hopeless when caught late. Dental disease, kidney disease, heart murmurs, endocrine disorders and many tumours all have a long quiet phase where a routine exam or blood panel finds them while you still have options.

An annual check-up, twice yearly once your dog is senior, is the best-value veterinary spend there is. Dental care deserves a specific mention: periodontal disease is common, painful and quietly inflammatory, and owners underestimate it because dogs do not complain.

4. Feed a complete, appropriate diet

The goal here is less exciting than the internet suggests: a nutritionally complete diet, appropriate to life stage and size, from a manufacturer that will tell you who formulated it and how it is tested. Kibble, wet, fresh or home-prepared matters far less than complete and correctly portioned. Two cautions — home-prepared diets are easy to get wrong and the deficiencies take months to show, so do them with a veterinary nutritionist; and snacks and food rewards often make up a quarter of daily calories, which quietly undoes point one.

5. Protect against parasites and infectious disease

Year-round parasite control is straightforward and high value. Fleas, ticks, heartworm and intestinal worms cause disease that is entirely preventable, and the regional risks differ enough that this is a conversation with your own vet rather than a rule from an article.

Core vaccination belongs here too: the diseases it prevents — distemper, parvovirus, adenovirus, rabies — are severe, and parvovirus still kills puppies. Thinking on frequency has moved, though. Current guidance for core vaccines in adult dogs is measured in years rather than annually, and boosting more often than needed benefits nobody.

If you are uneasy about repeat boosters, the productive conversation to have with your vet is antibody titre testing: a blood test showing whether your dog still carries protective antibodies, which often lets a booster be deferred on evidence rather than guesswork. What matters is that your dog is genuinely protected — whether a titre or a booster confirms it is a detail you can settle together.

And the bonus: where supplements fit

A well-chosen supplement will not replace anything above. What it does is support the five things that already work, and that is a real job rather than a consolation prize.

Joint support is the clearest case. A dog that moves comfortably keeps walking, keeps its muscle, and stays lean — which is points one and two on this list, the two with the strongest evidence of the five. A dog that hurts does the opposite: it stops moving, loses condition and gains weight. Helping a dog hold its mobility therefore feeds directly into the things that do change how long and how well it lives.

Which formula you pick matters more here than in any other category, because most of the shelf is built on an ingredient the trials rejected. We grade what is actually on the market against published criteria in our graded joint supplement ranking.

Three other categories are worth knowing:

• Digestive health. Specific probiotic strains have genuine canine trials behind them, including one on 773 dogs, and a settled gut changes how well a dog uses its food. We cover what the evidence supports in our probiotics guide.
• Oral health. Dental chews, enzymatic gels and water additives can help slow plaque. Given how common and how quietly painful periodontal disease is, anything that supports point three above earns its place.
• Targeted support. More specific formulas exist for renal function, skin and coat, and cognitive ageing. These are worth a conversation with your vet rather than a shopping basket: they are most useful aimed at something you have actually diagnosed.

One honest caveat to keep the order straight: no supplement has been shown on its own to extend a dog's lifespan, and any brand telling you otherwise is ahead of its evidence. The five things above are the plan. This is the bonus that helps you keep to it.

This article is general information, not veterinary advice. Vaccination and parasite protocols depend on where you live and on your individual dog — discuss both with your own veterinarian.