NOW SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT--A NEW AND BETTER WAY TO CALCULATE YOUR DOG'S AGE

Have you ever noticed how inaccurate the conventional idea that one year in a dog's life equals 7 human years is? Well so did Trey Ideker at UC San Diego and his colleagues. You can read about the details of their study--based on changes to DNA over time--here. The bottom line is that dogs age much more quickly than humans for the first few years, but then their rate of ageing slows down.

It turns out that for dogs one year old or older, a more accurate formula is:

Equivalent human age =16 * ln (dog's age in years) + 31.

That's 16 times the natural logarithm of the dog's age in years, plus 31. 

 Ruff, age 12, or 70.8 using the new formula

Credit: Carol Von Canon/Creative Commons

The link above has a convenient calculator you can use to see how well you think the formula works.

It certainly seems to make more sense for older dogs, for whom the age-times-seven formula makes 12-year-old Ruff 84, and any dog over 14 a centenarian. The logarithmic calculation produces much more reasonable ages for older dogs. See for yourself.

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REA