This is right in the top 5 of the questions I am asked most often.
The common belief tends to compare each year of a dog’s life to 7 of those of humans; this is an overly approximate type of calculation and does not take into account many factors such as:
- cut it
- race
- age
- supply
- type of physical activity
“A year” is and remains an objective and immutable unit of measurement during which enormous changes can occur in a dog’s physiology and, depending on which particular year we are considering, the significance of these changes can vary substantially. The idea of being able to compare it to x number of human years remains rather inconclusive, especially since the speed with which the canine organism develops, changes a lot according to the stage of life who is going through.
To better understand this concept, it will also be necessary to take into consideration the average life span of a dog comparing that of a small dog to those of medium, large and giant dogs.
In general, the smaller the size of the dog, the longer it will be.