Have you ever heard that one dog year is equivalent to seven human years? This ratio of 1:7 is a good general guideline, but is not accurate in all cases. Different species or breeds actually age at different rates. There are a number of other factors involved too, including nutrition, genetics, and environmental factors.
A better way to judge the relative age of your pet is to consider the first year of a puppy’s life as equivalent to the first 15 years of a human’s life. The next year brings your dog to about the same maturity as a 24 year old person. Then after that, each dog year is equivalent to about four human years.
It may be even easier to know that your dog goes through many of the same developmental stages as people do. You can expect different behavior as your puppy grows from an infant, to a toddler, child, adolescent, young adult, middle-aged adult, elderly adult, and finally geriatric adult. Your dog has different needs at each stage, so understanding those stages, and knowing how best to meet your pet’s needs, will have benefits for you and your dog.
At Heights at La Salle Apartments in Durham, North Carolina, we believe it is important to take certain facets of life into consideration. We hope that this blog will shed some light on the stages of a dog’s life and what goes into making
