There’s nothing more heart breaking for a dog owner than the moment that they lose their beloved pet. No matter how old a dog gets, it always feels like they pass away too soon.

Experts are now saying that the color of your dog’s fur can reveal how long your dog is going to live. Experts at the University of Sydney researched three different colors of Labrador retrievers: chocolate, yellow, and black. They then tracked the difference in life expectancy in the three different types of Labradors.

After looking at 33,000 different labs, the researchers concluded that chocolate Labs have the shortest life expectancy. Yellow and black Labs were found to have a life expectancy of 12.1 years, but chocolate Labs had a 10% lower life expectancy.

On top of that, chocolate Labs were found to be twice as likely to get ear infections and four times as likely to suffer from pyotraumatic dermatisis, a skin disease that is also known as hot spots.

The researchers concluded that the pigmentation of the coat and the genetic makeup of the dog effects the animals overall health and wellbeing.

“The relationships between coat color and disease may reflect an inadvertent consequence of breeding certain pigmentations,” explained Paul McGreevy, who led the study. “Because chocolate color is recessive in dogs, the gene for this color must be present in both parents for their puppies to be chocolate. Breeders targeting this color may therefore be more likely to breed only Labradors carrying the chocolate coat gene. It may be that the resulting reduced gene pool includes a higher proportion of genes conducive to ear and skin conditions.”

While this is interesting to know, it would not affect my choice when it comes to adopting a dog! When deciding what kind of dog that you are going to adopt, all that matters is that you find one that you have a lot of chemistry with. Once you have that, give the dog all the love that you can!