26 May 2013 Last updated at 18:37 ET

Thanks to our dog age calculator, people have been reassessing the age of their furry friends.

It put a new spin on the old saying that the age of dogs could be better understood by multiplying the number of years since their birth by seven.

So we asked the owners of canine centenarians to share the secret to their pets' longevity. Here is a selection of their answers:

"My family's wonderful late Irish wolfhound, Xavier, lived to one day shy of his 13th birthday," says Christopher Katz-Summercorn, from north-west London.

"The Irish wolfhound is the tallest dog breed and one of the biggest of the giant breeds so, based on the calculations that were provided to work out a dog's human age equivalent, Xavier would have been somewhere in his 120s. To have reached the age that he did was a particular achievement because the breed average for a wolfhound is seven years.

"In terms of the secret to such longevity, I think much can be attributed to Xavier being content to laze around for large quantities of time. He wasn't particularly active. The scene in the [above] photo portrayed a fairly typical day for him. Also, naturally, he was part of a loving family and was involved in everything we did. We were very fortunate to have had him with us for so long."

Zippy, a parson Jack Russell, is 18 years and two months old. Owner Carol Coulter says Zippy's son, Munky, isn't doing too badly either. He'll be 15 next month.

"Having a 'younger' dog in the house keeps her on her toes," reckons Coulter, from Edinburgh, who says that while Zippy's sight and hearing are failing, her sense of smell and appetite are "amazing". Conventional tonics like fresh air and exercise have played their part in the dog's longevity.

But Coulter reckons a good night out has played a part in keeping the zip in Zippy: "[She] used to come to work with me and on Friday nights, when we all had after-work drinks, she had a fondness for licking out the beer bottles. The kebabs - the dog-biscuit-on-a-skewer type, not doner - are one her favourite treats."

Original post:
Readers' 'secrets' to canine longevity