Sophie Cobb, a Shetland sheepdog in Omaha, recently celebrated her 20th birthday. That's an unusually long life for a dog. Most dogs are more likely to live a measly 10 to 12 years, with some making it to 14, 15 or older.
A good diet, exercise and regular veterinary care help set dogs up for a long, healthy life. But are there other ways to extend a dog's life span and improve quality of life?
Scientists with the Dog Aging Project (DAP) are seeking answers to those questions through a long-term study of how dogs age and the genetic and environmental factors that affect aging and disease in dogs.
In the process, they also hope to learn about the biology of aging in humans, because dogs share our lives — from the air we breathe to the food we eat and sometimes to the beds we sleep in.
"Dogs get the same diseases we do," said Matt Kaeberlein, one of the co-directors of the project. "The health care system in dogs is second only to our own in sophistication. What we learn about how genes and the environment shape the risk of age-related disease in dogs is likely to be related to the genes and environmental risk factors for age-related diseases in humans, as well."
More than 10,000 dogs will participate in the longitudinal study: big dogs, small dogs, mixed breeds, purebreds — all are important in teasing out the secrets behind canine aging.
Because of the compressed nature of the dog life span, a lot can be learned in a decade, both environmentally and at the molecular level.
"The dog provides us with a really terrific opportunity to ask how those molecular changes differ between long-lived and short-lived individuals within the same species," said Daniel Promislow, co-director of the project.
