The conventional wisdom on dog years is that one of them is equal to about seven human years – a highly scientific approach that we got to by taking the life span of the average human and dividing it by that of the average pooch.
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This way of calculating a dog’s age has been debunked more than once in recent times, but now, researchers from the University of California reckon they’ve hit upon the most accurate way yet to tell your best friend’s age in dog years.
Finally, a breakthrough that we can use. Thank you, science!
According to New Scientist, professor Trey Ideker and his team performed a genetic analysis of canines and humans to compare how we age over time, studying more than 100 Labradors, from tiny pups right through to 16-year-olds.|
They concluded that our perception of dog years is actually way off, and that dogs reach maturity relatively fast, then slow down later in life. How fast? Shockingly enough, they reckon that a one-year-old dog is 31 in human years.
We ran the numbers through their converter and came up with the below table, which shows dogs sliding into middle age super fast, then easing slowly into their senior years at around the age of seven. Of course, they may not care to know these details themselves.
You can check the table to see for yourself how old your very good boy or girl is:
