Age is all relative

How many dog years in a human year?

For a long time, we have been anthropomorphising our dogs and attempting to work out how old they are compared to us. For a very long time we have hypothesised that 1 human year equals 7 dog years. This formula was derived from dividing the average life of a dog by the average life of a human and coming up with approximately 7. Dogs seem to mature rapidly and then age more slowly. Large breed dogs don’t live as long as small breed dogs. Some breeds of the same size are longer lived than other breeds of that size. It is all very confusing.

Tina Wang of the University of California in San Diego, along with her collaborators, decided to see if epi-genetics would help to make the comparison more accurate.  Her preliminary results have been published recently and can be found on BioRxiv.

According to the epi-genetics, Labradors at least age very rapidly in the first 2 years of life and then it all become much more gradual. Doesn’t seem quite right to me, what to you think?

I think the best thing to do is not try and age your dog in human years, they are what they are. Or better still, how old are you in dog years?