What if dogs lived as long as people?
Your dog stays with you for seventy years. It sees you move house three times, and meets your grandchildren.
Twelve years old, and barely started.
Day 1
Nothing looks different at first. Then vets start sending home new charts: at twelve, your dog isn’t old. It has barely started.
Owners look at the dog on the sofa and wonder whether the sofa will last that long.
Year 1
People move house and the dog comes along, then move again, and the dog comes along again. Wills start naming who gets the dog, because the dog may outlive its owner.
Food, hips and teeth need planning for decades. The puppy years are a small part of the story.
Year 10
A dog can know a child and, later, that child’s children. A grey muzzle means real old age, not middle age.
The hard part is that people still die first sometimes. Someone then has to take in a dog that has lived with one family for thirty years.
Who wins
- DogsTime for more than one house and more than one generation.
- VetsPatients for decades, not a handful of years.
Who loses
- People who wanted a ten-year commitmentThe dog outlasts the plan, the flat and sometimes the marriage.
- Small flatsA seventy-year dog needs seventy years of space.
- Owners who die firstTheir will has to name who looks after the dog next.
Even with seventy years, a dog would still be a dog: its hips, heart and teeth wear out faster than ours. Vets can already stretch a dog’s life a little. A human lifetime is a different animal.
Would you want a dog for seventy years?
More what-ifs
