Everything you need to know about your pet. After all, the health of your friend depends on you. But what if you took the dog from the street or just took it from the shelter? Since most people can determine the age of a dog only by documents, this important information can forever remain under the cover of secrecy. Contrary to popular belief, there are many ways to help you find out how old your pet is. In this article, we will tell you about how to determine the age of a dog without having any documents.
Common Dog Age Methods
Specialists, in cases when an animal was taken to a shelter, and there is no information about its origin, determine the age of the dog by the teeth. In order to get an idea of how much your little shaggy friend tramples the earth, it is enough to know only certain patterns of appearance and change of milk teeth.
Dog age table
Mostly dogs live for twelve to fifteen years, but individuals at the age of twenty are also found. The most real record holder was a Japanese dog named Puske - she lived twenty-six years and eight months. According to the Russian system of calculation (one canine year is equal to seven human), its age was estimated at 182 years. But Japanese experts work according to a slightly different scheme - officially the dog was "painted" one hundred twenty-five years. An interesting fact: until its very last days, Puske felt just fine, the only health problems of the dog occurred when she got under the car a few years before her death.
Specialists distinguish several age groups in dogs:
- puppies (under eight weeks old);
- young dogs (under the age of eighteen months);
- adult dogs (over one and a half years).
Features of the dentition of dogs
To know how to determine the age of a dog’s teeth, you need to have a basic understanding of the location of the teeth. Dogs have forty-two teeth: twelve incisors, four canines, a pair of false teeth on the lower jaw, and twenty-four molars on both jaws. However, today anomalies are more and more often encountered, when the number of teeth can vary in a larger or, conversely, smaller side. The dog's dental formula is expressed in the following numbers:
- for the upper jaw: 6 - 2 - 8 - 4;
- for the lower jaw: 6 - 2 - 8 - 6.
Note: the first digit indicates the number of incisors, the second - fangs, the third - molars, the so-called premolars (milk predecessors), and the fourth figure is the number of molars - permanent teeth.
Basic principles
The principle of determining the age of a puppy or dog is based on the basic patterns of teething, their abrasion, and then the appearance of permanent teeth and their abrasion. Newborn puppies, of course, have no teeth. In older individuals, teeth are erased in different ways, it all depends on the nutrition and health status of the animal. In determining the age of the dog, the incisors play the most noticeable role - each such tooth (more precisely, its crown) acts as three points (fields, teeth, points). It is important to remember that in most cases, both lateral incisors are erased with time so much that they simply disappear.
Determining the age of a puppy's teeth
As mentioned earlier, puppies are born toothless. The first milk teeth and fangs appear on their twentieth or even twenty-fifth day of life. Molar teeth erupt in a small animal right between the first and second months of life.
A young dog, like a man, gains permanent teeth gradually. First, the incisors are replaced, and then the so-called false-rooted teeth. When the dog is eleven months old, she is guaranteed to not have a single milk tooth left. When the dog turns one year old, she sparkles straight Hollywood smile for all forty-two. It is this period that we will consider as a turning point - since it is possible to find out the age of the dog from this moment only by the intensity of erasing the tubercles on the incisors, as well as by the grinding of the fangs.
Is it possible to determine the age of the dog by other principles?
Of course yes! But the trouble with all these methods is that they are all too approximate.
So, for a dog of twelve years is characteristic:
- Gray hair on the face. The older the dog, the more gray hair. Moreover, this gray hair may appear as early as six to seven years. Six to twelve - a wow scatter of indicators, is not it?
- Deep set, dull eyes.
- Unclear pupils. Vision problems may occur.
- Soft back, flattened stomach.
- Corns on elbows and hock.
- Dull, tousled hair.
Now you know how to determine the age of the dog. As you can see, there are no difficulties in this process, even a person without special training can easily cope with this. The only thing you should always take into account the fact that many indicators can vary greatly up to a year.