Over the weekend, we celebrated 10 years since we rescued Forrest. (The black one). His pal Bailey( The fawn one) turned 18 back in April. We guessed that would make him about 105, but we were not correct at all!
You’ve probably heard the old rule-of-thumb that dog years are like human years times seven. So when your dog is one, that’s like being a seven-year-old person . . . at two, it’s like being 14, and so on.
But a new study out of the University of California, San Diego found that system isn’t REALLY accurate. The researchers say, quote, “A nine-month-old dog can have puppies, so we already knew the one-to-seven [age] ratio wasn’t accurate.”
They studied the age of the cells in a dog’s body to figure out what they really are in human years. And here’s what they found . . .
1. Dogs make a HUGE leap in their first year, and by the time a dog is one year old, they’re basically like a 30-year-old person.
2. Then their aging slows down. At age two, they’re around 40 in human years. By the time a dog is four, that’s like being 52 in human years.
3. And their aging really tails off after that. When a dog is 10 years old or older, they’re like a 70-year-old person and they start aging at about one human year for every dog year.
So I guess Bailey would be 78 and Forrest 72. Is it strange that some days I feel older than both?
(UCSD)
(Here’s a chart showing dog versus human years.)
