On the Old Grey Muzzle Tour, Bort might challenge for the title of spryest pup around.
Named after a "Simpsons" gag - Bart can't quite find the right name tag at the amusement park gift shop - Bort is a Rottweiler, a breed that typically lives to age 9. But the Underwood Street dog turns 14 at the end of the month and shows no signs of slowing down.
"Some of these dogs are quite frail," said David Waters, a Purdue University research veterinarian and head of the affiliated Gerald P. Murphy Cancer Foundation in Indiana. "Bort is quite robust."
Waters recently kicked off a 23-day tour to meet the nation's 15 oldest known Rottweilers, a whirlwind medical research mission dubbed the Old Grey Muzzle Tour.
At the Murphy foundation, Waters and other scientists look at age-related cancers, tapping the field of comparative oncology to discover useful similarities and differences between species.
Waters is also examining the physiology behind successful aging, with the expectation that choices at a young age can play a crucial role much later.
But there's a catch: Unless researchers spend decade upon decade following subjects, any elderly study recruit is unlikely to remember factors like how many fruits and vegetables she ate as a child.
That's where dogs come in: They typically live with just one owner for a relatively short period of time, with extensive records kept for purebreds like Bort. Plus, under the more complex conversion formula than the one popularly used, his age equates to 107 years for humans.
"We take advantage of this compressed life span of dogs to answer some of these important questions faster," Waters said.
Over the last three years, the Murphy center tapped kennel clubs, breeding groups and veterinarians to build a database of the 140 longest-lived Rottweilers, chosen because they are a popular breed and because they have an unfortunate tendency to develop cancer.
Only 15 of the 140 are still alive. The oldest is a 15-year-old female in Pacific Palisades, Calif.
"My hunch is they're going to be uniquely different," Waters said. "That's what we want to focus on: their uniqueness, what's at the root of their exceptionality."
Bort belongs to George and Gretchen Caldwell, Holliston parents and Rottweiler fanciers who got him a month before they married. They later saw a request for Rottweilers older than 13 through one of their breed Web groups, filling out a 15-page medical and behavioral history for their pet.
