It’s interesting to figure out how old your dog is in human years. It’s a common question that comes up often. People love to place human characteristics to their pets.
It’s kind of a silly thing to think about but dog owners lover their pets. There’s an old myth that says for every one year of an animals life it actually equals 7 human years.
There is some logic to that myth. An average size medium dog would live an average of 1/7th as long as it’s owner. Thus the reason why we say for every year a dog lives equals 7 years in human years.
Bigger dogs tend to have shorter lives than smaller ones do. While cats are even smaller in size. The smallest Chihuahua versus a huge Great Dane the life expectancy is quite different.
Dog breed and size is a large contributor to length of life, other factors include nutrition, weight and overall health being some of the most important factors for dogs.
But this doesn’t help us answer the question of how old your pet is.
Figuring out Scruffy’s age in dog years or Whiskers age in cat years helps a vet to determine what stage of life they are in. This specifically helps them determine course of actions during illness and healh care for long term issues.
Vets use the information just like human doctors. There is no need to test a normal puppy’s thyroid levels.
So the next time the question comes up “how old is your pet”? you can determine what stage of life they are in before calculating their dog age and converting into human years.