When Five Equals Thirty-six

When Five Equals Thirty-six

10.19.2016

October 19th, 2016, Chloe's 5th Birthday.

If you read the title, you're probably wondering how I can get five to equal thirty-six, ...or as Sherlock Holmes would say to Watson, "It's elementary, as we're talking the mathematical equivalent of dog years here."  Well, to tell you the truth and after a little bit of my own research it's really not that easy to have five equal to thirty-six even if we're talking dog years.

Most of us grew up being taught that one dog year was equivalent to seven human years, right? Well it appears that's a myth developed in the 1950s, when the average life span of a dog was thought to be ten years and the average human lived for seventy years, and by reason of simple deduction would mean a dog's life span was seven years to one year of his master. Okay, simple enough you say, but wouldn't that mean five dog years is really equal to just thirty-five human years? How do you get thirty-six?

So as the story goes, statisticians started to factor in whether your dog was of either a small, medium or large breed in order to determine a more exact human age equivalency. It seems smaller dogs do in fact live a longer life than large canines and when size is brought into the mix, particularly during a puppy's first year, the longevity formula gets tweaked a little.

Using Chloe as an example and knowing that her breed as an American Cocker Spaniel is classified as medium in terms of dog size, her equivalent human age on this day of October 19th 2016 in which she turned "five years old" is "thirty-six", and before I forget, let me just say "Happy Birthday Chloe, and many, many more!"

Interested in knowing the human equivalency age of your dog, here's a really nice Dog Age Calculator from pedigree.com that makes it easy and fun.