the "1 dog year = 7 human years" thing is just made up

ngl saw it again on a vet office poster of all places. there's no science behind it like, it's a rough ratio someone pulled from average lifespans decades ago and it stuck

dogs age really fast at the start and then slow down a lot. a 1 year old dog is basically a teenager, not a 7 year old kid. it also changes a ton with size. a great dane gets old way sooner than a chihuahua

[URL unfurl="true"]https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cels.2020.06.006[/URL]

the

yeah that paper is the methylation one with labradors. iirc the formula comes out to something like 16 × ln(dog age) + 31, which means my 1 year old idiot was apparently 31 in human years while he was eating a whole tube of chapstick. which tracks, ive seen 31 year olds do worse at weddings

the formula is a log curve so it also means old dogs barely age at all on paper. my neighbors 14 year old beagle would only be like 73 and that dog moves like hes 140. so idk, maybe they should redo it with more breeds than just labs before i start trusting a logarithm about my dog

oh my gosh the beagle at 73 made me laugh... my sister's lab is 13 and that formula would make him 72 too, but he naps in the sun like my late father-in-law did at 95, bless him... I think the formula breaks down because small dogs and big dogs age so differently, and the study was only done on Labradors if I remember right... my grandson Tyler did a whole science fair poster on dog years last spring and got an honorable mention, so now I'm the family expert lol... and the 31 year olds at weddings comment is so true... I saw a Dateline last night where the whole thing started at a reception, so maybe the chapstick dog is the least of our worries... just my two cents!!

lol congrats to Tyler, honorable mention at a science fair is basically a phd at the family thanksgiving level. as far as anyone can tell the 7 thing just came from someone dividing a 70 year human lifespan by a 10 year dog lifespan and calling it a day. the vet version i got told is about 15 for year one, 9 for year two, then like 4 or 5 a year after that depending on size. my childhood dog was a mutt so nobody knew what size bracket he was supposed to be in, so we just decided he was 40

lol "we just decided he was 40" honestly that's how my husband picks his age too!! our old mutt Biscuit stayed "about 8" for something like five years because nobody wanted to do the math... tbh i think vets should just tell you whether your dog is a teenager or a retiree and stop there Mine always acted like a retiree anyway, he'd sit by the retention pond and watch the herons for an hour without moving a muscle... Just my two cents!!

lol "we just decided he was 40" honestly that's how my husband picks his age too!

a dog thats been 8 for five years is just a dog with a better grasp of time than the rest of us... ngl i'd bet nobody in that house owned a watch with a date window either

lol my grandma did that with her cat, he was "about 12" from 1998 to like 2011. there was a study a few years back where they looked at dna methylation in labradors and got a log formula, something like 16 times the natural log of the dog's age plus 31. by that math a 1 year old lab is basically 31, which tracks bc my cousin's lab ate a whole rotisserie chicken off the counter and then slept for 14 hours, very 31 year old behavior. nobody's doing logarithms at the vet though, so we're stuck with vibes

...on Labradors if I remember right...... honestly

funny how a formula can tell you a dog's age but cant tell you when a nap in the sun is just a nap in the sun... my neighbor's lab does the same thing, mostly right in the strip of grass the city says i'm supposed to mow by the curb

lol the curb strip belongs to the lab now, thats just how it works. the 7 year thing really is made up tho, dogs age super fast in the first couple years and then it slows way down. i think the labrador study you mentioned used DNA methylation stuff and came up with some log formula 🐶 my old beagle hit 14 and still acted like a puppy whenever cheese showed up so idk what the math was even measuring

...was a study a few years back where they looked...

lol a cat stuck at 12 for 13 years is the most cat thing ever. and yeah thats the 2019 UCSD one, human age = 16 x ln(dog age) + 31. so a 1 year old lab works out to a 31 year old human, which is WILD considering every lab ive met acts like a to

yeah that paper is the methylation one with labradors iirc the formula comes out to something like 16 × ln(dog age) + 31, which means my 1 year old idiot was apparently 31 in human years while he was eating a whole tube of chapstick. which tracks, ive seen 31 year olds do worse at weddings

the fo

31 at one year old... well that explains why my daughter's lab acted like a grumpy middle aged man who wanted his recliner and nothing else lol... Tyler figured out our old beagle was something like 60 by that math and now he calls him "grandpa" every time we visit... Just my two cents!!

so I had Tyler do the math on his phone with that formula and a 14 year old dog only comes out to about 73... which seems awfully young to me considering how slow my neighbor's beagle walks around the retention pond now... the herons don't even bother moving out of his way anymore lol I guess the formula only really works for labs since that's what they studied, so I'd take the numbers for little dogs with a grain of salt... Just my two cents

so I had Tyler do the math on his phone with that formula and a 14 year old dog only comes out to about 73

wait 73 is actually right!! tbh i'm guessing that's the 16 × ln(age) + 31 one from the UC San Diego study in 2019 and it's natural log, which lots of people mess up, so Tyler did good lol. i think they only tested it on Labradors though, so it might not fit a beagle very well. i'd also guess "biologically 73" doesn't mean the dog moves like a person who's 73... my aunt is 73 and still does hikes, meanwhile i forget why i walked into the kitchen and i'm way younger than that!!

Just my two cents

yeah 16·ln(14)+31 comes out to ~73, so Tyler's math is fine. that formula came from methylation data on 104 labradors https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cels.2020.06.006 so using it on a beagle is already a stretch also plenty of 73 year olds walk slow too lol

lowkey wow Stargazer6 just has the UC San Diego formula memorized, natural log and all... must be nice. i had to look up what ln even meant and my watch doesnt have a button for that