Who was the person who originally thought of “dog years”?
Where did the idea originate from?
I don’t know the “who” part, but it probably was a kind way of explaining to children that the family dog doesn’t live as long as we do. The usual formula is that one human year amounts to seven years to a dog, on the assumption that humans live seven times as long as dogs. From there, a trickle of silly jokes came, like calculating Yoko Ono’s age in dog years.
It’s a flawed concept, as you know. The giant dogs rarely live more than 7 or 8 years, and a few breeds commonly reach 15. Also, most dogs reach sexual maturity in about a year and full size in two. So, the first calendar year really has about 13 or 14 dog years in it, then 6 or 7 in the next calendar year. Then it slows down from there until the dog’s death.
If you like, you can graph out the ratios for various breeds, factoring in the influence of arthritis and blindness. You can even figure out when your dog will be eligible to join the AARD, and start telling the puppies to “Get offa my lawn!”
Welcome to the SDMB, suzieql56.
A link to the column is appreciated. Providingone can be as simple as pasting the URL into your post. Like so: http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a2_010b.html
My dog trainers used the dog year/human year ratio to explain what behavior we could expect. For example: Dog’s first six months, behaves like a young child, very high energy alternating with long periods of sleep, very dependent on people’s attention and affection. The next year, the dog behaves like a 12-15 year old human - very energetic, willful, rebellious, a little anxious about the world. After eighteen months years, the dog’s like a teenager - indepedent, tons of physical energy, willful. At two years, like a 20 year old - starting to mellow out, be a little calmer, less anxious around others.
Not scientifically accurate, but we found it emotionally accurate. It was very useful to us in being patient when our dogs were in the jumping phase and kept resisting training.