This is a blog post by David Aguilar, front desk counselor
All of us have heard the myth that converting a dog’s age to human years was as simple as multiplying the dog’s age by seven. But if you really think about it, it doesn’t make sense at all. For example if Fluffy is one, that means in human years he is seven. How can that be? We all are aware that a one year old dog such as Fluffy, has sexually matured and just needs to finish growing into its adult body. Now does that sound like a 7 year old boy or a 15 year old teenager?
There isn’t an exact formula where you can just crunch some numbers and get an accurate age. A better generalized aging profile is the first dog year is equivalent to 10 to 15 human years. The second would be 5 to 8 years and every year after that would be 3 to 4 years. It sounds great on paper but in reality it isn’t very accurate when it comes to your furry best friend. Why? Well because this is method doesn’t take into account size. Smaller dogs tend to outlive bigger ones. For example, a miniature poodle has a life expectancy of 14 years compared to a mastiff which only has an average expectancy of 7years. Size isn’t all that matters though. Breed is also a big factor when it comes to age profiles. For example Dobermans and boxers have the same average weight but the Doberman has a life expectancy of 15 years compared to the boxer with 10. Other key factors would be gender, since females live a bit longer than males. Neutered/spayed dogs also have a longer life expectancy.
So in theory if you put all these factors and a couple more like weight, activity level, health conditions, food quality, and etc. you would get a very accurate age conversion for your dog. But it is nearly impossible to do so with so many variables to account for. Don’t be deterred by this though. Here are two age calculators that I found useful
http://www.pedigree.com/All-Things-Dog/dog-age-calculator/default.aspx,
http://www.ajdesigner.com/fl_dog_age/dog_age.php
for calculating dog age.
Below is also a neat chart that you can use for quick reference. Just take each one with a grain of salt because even though they are better than the 7 year myth none of them will be perfect. So tell us if were you always right about your dogs age or are they younger/older than you thought they were. Do you have your own formula that you use that is better?
http://quirkbooks.com/book/dog-owner%E2%80%99s-manual
Thanks for reading!