Brian Peck

Weekends

“Dog Years” doesn’t work like we thought… Here’s a more accurate look at your dog’s age in human years

You’ve probably heard the old rule-of-thumb that dog years are like human years times seven…

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.  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.

UCSD

Tags: