Human age of dogs

Dogs have served people for hundreds of years. Being smart pets, they helped humans in a variety of ways. Any owner of these four-legged creatures worries about the life span of his dog, and for this reason, through observations and research, the ratio of human years to canine years has been found.

Determining the age of a dog visually is quite difficult. It is easy to distinguish an adult dog from a newborn puppy, but understanding the exact age of an animal will only help to know all the signs of a particular year of life. Below is a table that will help you accurately determine the age of your pet by such a sign as the quality of the teeth.

It should be remembered that to determine the age of the dog using the table, you can approximately: more accurate needs to be found out based on the date of birth. This is because the quality of the coat, teeth and physique also depend on the environment. Homeless mongrels quickly lose their muscles due to a poor diet, and the coat can be exposed to diseases (lichens, skin diseases).

In a home environment, when the dog is given attention and care, the situation is the opposite: the quality of its teeth and coat is above average, because loving owners monitor the pet's health.

In order for a person to easily understand how long dogs live on average, several methods have been created to calculate the "human" age of an animal. So, the owners of the four-legged understand how old the pet is, and can be guided by this figure. It is impossible to say exactly how old a dog is by human standards: three different methods of calculation create confusion. The differences between them are not too big, but they need to be taken into account. So, if, according to a simplified calculation, the dog is 35 years old, according to LeBeau's theory, he is 45.

Before embarking on the calculation, it is necessary to understand that it is impossible to find the perfect relationship between human life and a dog's life. Each dog has its own individual life, which includes the influence of the environment. This suggests that even after studying the average life length of a certain breed, it is impossible to accurately understand how old the animal is in a human way. For this reason, the age of the dog should not be the same as that of the human.

In the XX century, the first, still primitive calculation of canine years with a human was born. The creators were veterinarians who needed to know approximately how the life expectancy of a person and a dog is related. Veterinarians did not delve into this issue and study different dog breeds, but took an average life span of 10 years. The life expectancy of a person at that moment fluctuated greatly, and the arithmetic mean of 70 years was taken for calculation.

Thus, a simplified calculation of life expectancy appeared, which boiled down to a simple conclusion: 1 canine year is equal to 7 human years. And although such a calculation cannot be called accurate due to the individual data of each dog breed that were not included in the calculation, the simplified method was most widespread among people, because it was quickly remembered and was easy to use. The correspondence table below allows you to find out how many "human" years the pet is according to the simplified calculation method.

While the most popular, simplified calculation ranks last in accuracy. The method does not take into account any data (dog breed, first years of life), which means that it cannot translate age according to these characteristics.

The simple method of calculating did not satisfy the French veterinarian A. LeBeau, which is why he decided to study the biological characteristics of dogs. LeBeau found out that the first year of a dog's life cannot be counted as 7 years, because in 365 days the dog is fully formed as an adult, which cannot be said about a seven-year-old child. This is how the theory appeared in 1953, on the basis of which the first year of a dog's life was counted as 15 human years. The second year of the dog's existence should be counted as 9. Thus, a dog at the age of 2 is equal to a 24-year-old person.

In his research, the veterinarian took into account the following characteristics:

• life expectancy;
• age of puberty, willingness to reproduce - in most breeds, puberty occurs during the first year of life;
• the age of maturity, the moment when the dog is fully matured as an adult - basically this is the two years of age of the animal.

The table below takes into account the average weight class of dogs, whose weight starts at 15 kg but does not exceed 45.

Like the other two methods, LeBeau's theory has been criticized on several occasions. However, the presence of variables such as age at puberty and moment of maturity highlight LeBeau's theory as a more accurate way of determining the age of an animal in human terms.

In 1930, in Switzerland, scientist Max Kleiber describes a rule that links body mass (weight) to individual metabolism (the rate at which food is completely digested). The law applies not only to dogs, but also to all animals, it is suitable for determining the "human" years of a cat or a parrot. Today Kleiber's law is also applied to plants.

In simple language, the law establishes the relationship between the weight of the dog and the metabolism: the larger the animal is, the longer it will live. That is, small breeds of dogs with a fast metabolism will live for some time less than the Russian wolfhound. The problem with the calculation is the dog's average heart rate.

The table is based on the average weight of dogs (10-25 kg).

Kleiber's method has medium accuracy. It takes into account the weight and metabolism of a living creature, so the number of years can vary individually for each individual. The advantage of the law is that it is universal and suitable for any living creature, which cannot be said about other methods of calculation.

There are many errors in calculations. Each dog has an individual development, which makes it almost impossible to accurately determine the "human" age. Some errors are the most common.

• In simplified terms, the first year is considered 7 years. The first 365 days in a dog's life are underestimated - during this time, the development of the animal occurs at a doubled rate. Muscles are forming, preparation for puberty is underway. For this reason, counting the first year of a dog's life as 7 is wrong. To avoid the mistake, one should take the first 12 months as 14-15 human years.
• The second year of a dog's life is also referred to as important periods in a dog's life. While the simplified calculation considers the second year to be 7, it should be taken as 9-10 years. This often causes confusion in calculations, but these conditions cannot be neglected.
• Kleiber's Law does not specialize in dogs. For this reason, factors such as breed and physiological characteristics of the pet are not taken into account in the equation. Therefore, Kleiber's law is not accurate when a quadruped breed implies a shorter lifespan than other breeds.