How Fast Do Dogs Age? Hint, The 7 Years Per Human May Not Be Right, And Other Dog Stuff
What I do know is that dogs don’t live long enough for how much they love you.
I found this story and here are the highlights as well as the link to the study, but it’s not how we were told they age and it explains why.
- Three recent discoveries have changed scientists’ understanding of the nature of dogs.
- One study found that young puppies age much faster than young humans do, so the common rule of thumb that one “dog year” is equivalent to seven “human years” is wrong.
Dogs live an average of 12 years. Human life expectancy, by contrast, is at least five times that, which is why many people go by the common rule of thumb that one “dog year” is equivalent to seven “human years.”
But that one-to-seven ratio is wrong, researchers found — it’s a misunderstanding of how dogs’ aging processes compare to those of humans. Instead, according to a July study, genetic evidence suggests that Labrador puppies and other young dogs age faster than their older counterparts.
“What’s surprising is exactly how old a 1-year-old dog is — it’s like a 30-year-old human,” Trey Ideker, a co-author of that study, said in a press release.
Ultimately, in order to calculate your dog’s human-age equivalent, you’ll need a calculator. The researchers’ formula is: A dog’s human age = 16 ln * your dog’s age + 31. (The ln refers to the natural log of a number.)
