How old do you think your dog is?

For many years it was always thought that to work out the age of your Dog you just multiplied the age of the dog in Human years by seven. So if you had a Dachsund who was three years old, he was actually 21 in “Dog Years”. But more recently scientists and researchers have been working to decide if calculating the age of a dog can be as arbitrary as just multiplying by 7.

After a number of years of research the statistics showed that smaller dogs actually age faster in their early years (the first two “human years”) than medium or larger dogs. However, after the first two years the breed of the dog had more influence than the size. 

They therefore created a new calculation that works on the size and breed to give a “truer” reflection than just 7 times the human years. 

To summarise the calculation they worked out that on average a “small” dog such as a Dachshund or Border Terrier would age by 12.5 years per human year, for the first two years. “Medium” dogs such as Spaniels or Retrievers would age by 10.5 years per human year for the first two years, and “Large” dogs such as German Shepherd or Boxer would age by 9 years per human year.

From the third year on, it is the breed that dictated how quickly the dog aged and the difference per breed could be quite broad, for example a Miniature Dachshund may only age by 4.32 years for each subsequent year but a Bulldog would age by 13.42 years per human year.

Therefore, a six year old Dachshund would actually be 42 in dog years (interestingly the same as if you had still used the 6 times 7 calculation), but a Boxer would be 53.

Back in May last year, the BBC Magazine did a series of interesting articles on this very subject and they even created a Dog Calculator that allows you to choose your dog breed and put in its age in human years and it will tell you how “old” you dog is.

So why not let us know how old you thought your Dog was, and how old they are based on this new calculation formula?