Hi,
My Havanese will be nine in June, wow, how time flies. He acts exactly the same as he did at one years old, but I should qualify he has always been a very laid back dog. My pet sitter always tells me, Desi loves lazy days. He is mostly white with a little beige so he doesn't show any gray / white hairs so he looks just the same as he looked when he was a year old. We just had blood work done last month at the vets and everything came back perfect.
He is an awesome little guy, the most obedient dog and easiest dog to train I have ever had. He has his excellent title in rally and has been a therapy dog since his first birthday and he has traveled with us all over the United States, he is always so perfectly behaved and never barks on the plane or in the hotel room. One hotel left a plate of human cookies on our bed as part of the turn down service and even though Desi mostly hangs out on the bed when we are out of the room (I spied on him through the window when we had a first floor hotel room) he did not touch the cookies. When we opened the hotel door, he met us at the door wagging his tail and than ran over to the bed and jumped up staring at the cookies, as if to say, "Look mom and dad, what they brought us, I saved them to show you." He is, like I said, so good, my other dog would have gobbled up the cookies the minute they set the plate on the bed.
Our other dog is a six year old standard poodle and despite what they say about poodles, being super smart and easy to train, he forgot to read the breed book and it took years of training, I constantly wore a fanny pack with treats so I could work on training all day with him for four years. However, what our poodle lacks in obedience, he makes up for in fun. He is so much fun, he loves life, he loves hiking, swimming, chasing tennis balls and of course cuddling, he is a seventy five pound lap dog. At six years old he is now a very good boy, he no longer pulls on walks, jumps on people or barks at everything, eventually praise and treats does work.
I feel so lucky, I have to awesome dogs, two white, fluffy love bugs.
Overall, Havanese are pretty healthy purebred dogs and I think the average life is around fourteen years but many exceed that. Enjoy your Havanese, they are very special dogs.