One year, lived by a dog, is equal to 7 years of human life?

In one of the old commercials, the actor said the phrase: "Our dog Danny is 14 years old, it's as if I or you would be 98 years old." This popular advertisement allowed to strengthen the myth that one calendar year of man is equal to seven dog years, but at the same time she served Danny badly, aged for several decades. Although this myth also helps dog lovers to better understand the phases of life through which their pets pass, experts agree that this system is not accurate, especially from the time when the dogs reach their heyday. But what is to be done? How to recount the age of dogs to represent it as human? It turns out that there is a way out, and the result largely depends on the peak of your dog's development, as well as on its size and breed.

Dog life and development peak

Although you can translate dog years into human, the process can not be reduced to simple multiplication. The fact is that the advancement of a dog through life is not linear, and also can vary greatly depending on the breed and the size of the animal. For example, dogs very quickly develop in the first year of their life, growing in this period about twenty times faster than humans. Then the rate of their development gradually decreases, as a result of coming to a ratio more similar to one human year against seven canines.

A more accurate system

If you need a system with which you could count the age of your pet for human years, it is worth suggesting that by the end of the first year of life, the dog reaches 15 human years. In the second year of life there are 9 more human, so the dog will have 24 human years, when it celebrates its second birthday. After this, you need to add 4 to 6 human years for each year of dog's life, depending on the size of the dog. For small dogs, one human year is worth taking for four years, for middle dogs - for five, and for large dogs - for six years.

The difference in the size of dogs

At first glance, the difference may not seem too large, but over time it accumulates. By the age of five, large breeds reach the age of 36 years and are considered as elderly. In average dogs there is one more year, and this age they reach in six years. As for small dogs, they are considered elderly only after the seventh year of life. What about Danny from advertising? Its size was between average and large, and age - 14 years. Accordingly, he was 78-88 years old, that is, advertising overstated his age by 10-20 years.