Maybe it’s because I have a birthday next week . . . or maybe it’s because every time I look into Joey’s eyes I notice that not only has his muzzle gone white, but the fur around his eyes is starting to come in white. People admiring him have been volunteering that he must be a senior dog now.
To the best of my ability to know, Joey will be eight on July 11 (the date is when our relationship started). I don’t think of him as a senior dog, but I do notice changes. Where he used to wait for me to stir in the mornings and then leap out of bed, these days he gets up stretches, watches me roll out of the covers and head for the bathroom and he turns around and curls up in his bed again. His tolerance for Red’s antics has given him the reputation for being a curmudgeon.
The old rule of thumb about comparing a dog’s age with a human’s was to multiply the dog’s age in years by seven to get the human age equivalent. Today, there are more accurate formulas that take into consideration that a dog ages at different rates during its lifespan.
This handy calculator will do the work for you — or even translate your age into dog years, if you want to feel younger.
They say that small dog breeds tend to live longer than larger ones. The small dog’s body doesn’t have to work as hard as a large one’s to do daily functions — a smaller dog’s heart is pumping less blood a smaller distance; its muscles and lungs don’t have to pump so hard to push air into and out of its body.
So many of dogs’ age-related health issues read just like our own: graying fur; drier, more delicate skin; a tendency to pick up weight; a tendency to become less active; diabetes; constipation; bad teeth; breast cancer; skin cancer; enlarged prostate glands; getting hard of hearing; arthritis; even senile dementia. ( In fact, according to John Cargill and Susan Thrope-Vargas of Woodhaven Labs, dogs and rats are the only non-primates known to develop plaques in their brains that resemble those of people with Alzheimer’s.)
The tragedy remains: dogs don’t live as long as we do. There’s always a heart break in the future when you get a dog.
The challenge for both dogs and people is paying rigorous attention to what we can control in the aging process:Â Eating right, getting regular strenuous exercise, being mentally stimulated, taking care of our teeth and not allowing ourselves to become overweight. And, don’t forget, screening for age-related health problems. The table above and left is guide to when to start screening for health problems associated with aging.
