So I was going about my day – you know, living an honest and fair life – until I came across a piece of information that well and truly turned my world upside down. A piece of information that shattered my faith in humanity. A piece of information that left me with the inability to love again….
1 dog year does not equate to 7 human years. This is ruff.
Okay, maybe I’m slightly exaggerating. It’s obviously no real surprise here that the blanket ‘7 year’ rule no longer applies – after all, we’re comparing apples and oranges here – but it still completely shits on my entire childhood when I ran around telling everyone how old my dog Bonnie was in human years. It felt like a superpower – a superpower that is now defunct and based on lies.
Alas, there were some flaws with the OG rule. As Lifehacker’s Hayley Williams notes, “Dogs reach sexual maturity at around one year old, so already the 7 year equivalence doesn’t make sense…” The rule also completely overlooked the dog’s respective size, breed and lifestyle.
Well, never fear, fellow truth-searchers: this graph via Business Insider can more adequately identify the age of your dog. Feast your eyes on the below stats, which focus on the particular size of the dog. As you can see, this ain’t no linear graph, sis – dogs apparently age quickly in the first year, before plateauing as the human years go by.
Check out the disparity between sizes though – while a small dog is 56 after 10 human years, a giant dog is 78.
There are obviously a lot of other factors to consider, such as the dog’s respective breed, but long story short, this is probably going to be the closest thing we get to a certified formula when comparing the ages of dogs and humans.
That being said, maybe we need to just leave the damn doggos alone and stop projecting ages onto them. Maybe it’s best to just focus on loving them for who they are. Those sweet baby angels.
Source: Lifehacker Australia
