It must be a marvelous thing to be a dog, if only because it’s been determined we’ve been calculating their ages all wrong and, GUESS WHAT, they’re younger.
The mutherpuppers are always living the dream, and now they’ve nabbed the Fountain of Youth! Classic.
According to an article in The Daily Mail, the whole “one dog year equals 7 human years” computation is complete nonsense. If you think about it, you can see the fallacy, since dogs are capable of reproducing before they turn one–which means hoomans would be able to pop out those babies at 6 and 1/2?
Yeah, no way.
Where did this myth originate? Well, in the year 1268, someone calculated Judgement Day decided the ratio of hooman years to doge years was 9:1. Fast forward about two handfuls of centuries to the 1950s, and most humans lived till 70, while most dogs lived till 10, ergo the 7 years to every 1 dog year.
This is where biology says, “math! you’re wrong!”. Dogs mature at different rates according to their age, breed, size–basically, there are so many variables, it’s a challenge to draw a broad age parallel that can be applied comparing homo sapiens years to those of canis domesticus.
Here are some handy-dandy charts that illustrate this:
In the end, age is just a number, and that number is just a mindset, right? At least that’s what my mom tells me every time my birthday rolls around, and what I think every time I see my 2-year-old doxie misbehave with the derpiness of a 3-month-old puppy.
Ah, dogs, truly furever young.
