For as much as we know about dogs, there are still some things that are being discovered. One of the mysteries that we’re always trying to crack is to understand exactly how our dogs’ aging works – particularly when it comes to calculating their real age in human years. While there are some that say you take your dog’s age and then multiply it by seven to get their human years, that might now always be the way to do it. For one, this actually happens to be inaccurate as Jesse Grady, a veterinarian with Mississippi State University has pointed out.
According to the vet, there are new studies that show dogs progress in age different to humans. It turns out that they do most of their rapid aging during their first five years of life. After the age of five, their aging tends to slow down. This makes a lot more sense and can better explain things like birthing puppies. If a dog is really the equivalent of a 7-year-old human, how it possible for them to be having puppies of their own? Now we get the explanation behind it – rapid aging.
While there is a new way of calculating a dog’s age, there are still certain factors to consider such as the size of the dog as well as the dog’s overall health. Broken down, the best way of thinking about these things is to assume that a dog that is 2-years-old is actually somewhere between 10 and 20 years-old in human years. If the dog is larger, then it’ll be more on the side of 20 years and if the dog is of a smaller breed then it’s more likely to be closer to 10 years.
When a dog reaches 6-years-old in dog years, that is roughly the same as being 35 to 50 years old in human years – dependent on size. Depending on size, an 8-year-old dog will be between 40 to 65 years old while a 10-year-old dog would be 50 to 80 in human years. It’s still not entirely specific, but it definitely is more accurate in terms of giving you a better understanding of where your dog is relative to human aging.
