How to determine the age of a dog by the teeth in five minutes

2024 Author: Priscilla Miln | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 00:21

Everything you need to know about your pet. After all, your friend's he alth depends on you. But what if you adopted a dog from the street or just took it from a shelter? Since most people can determine the age of a dog only from documents, this important information can forever remain under the cloak 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 how to determine the age of a dog without any documents.

Common methods for determining the age of dogs

Specialists in cases where the animal ended up in 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 ground, it is enough to know only some patterns of appearance and change.milk teeth.

Table of dog age

Mostly dogs live for twelve or fifteen years, but there are also individuals at the age of twenty. The real record holder was a Japanese dog named Puske - she lived for twenty-six years and eight months. According to the Russian system of reckoning (one dog year is equal to seven human years), her age was estimated at 182 years. But Japanese experts work according to a slightly different scheme - officially the dog was "painted" one hundred and twenty-five years old. An interesting fact: until her very last days, Puske felt just fine, the only he alth problems for the dog happened when she got hit by a car a few years before her death.

Specialists identify several age groups in dogs:

• puppies (under eight weeks old);
• young dogs (under 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 by 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 in the lower jaw, and twenty-four molars in both jaws. However, nowadays anomalies are becoming more and more common, when the number of teeth can vary up or down. The dental formula of a dog is expressed by the following numbers:

• for the upper jaw: 6 - 2 - 8 - 4;

• for the lower jaw: 6 - 2 - 8 - 6.

  

Note: the first number indicates the number of incisors, the second - canines, the third - molars, the so-called premolars (milk predecessors), and the fourth number is the number of molars - permanent teeth.

Guidelines

The principle of determining the age of a puppy or dog is based on the basic patterns of eruption of milk teeth, their erasure, and then the appearance of permanent teeth and their erasure. Newborn puppies, of course, do not have any teeth. In older individuals, teeth are erased in different ways, it all depends on the nutrition and he alth of the animal. In determining the age of a dog, the incisors play the most prominent 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 eventually wear out so much that they simply disappear.

Determining the age of a puppy by teeth

As mentioned earlier, puppies are born without teeth. The first milk teeth and fangs appear in them on the twentieth or even twenty-fifth day of life. The molars erupt in a small animal between the first and second month of life.

A young dog, like a person, acquires permanent teeth gradually. First, the incisors are replaced, and then the so-called false-rooted teeth. When a dog is eleven months old, it is guaranteed that it will not have a single milk tooth left. When the dog turns one year old, it sparkles with a straight Hollywood smile for all forty-two. It is this period that wewe will consider it as a turning point - since from this moment it is possible to know the dog's age only by the intensity of the abrasion of the tubercles on the incisors, as well as by grinding the fangs.

Is it possible to determine the age of a dog according to other principles?

Of course, yes! But the trouble with all these methods is that they are all too approximate.

So, for a twelve year old dog it is typical:

• Grey on the muzzle. The older the dog, the more gray hair. Moreover, this gray hair can appear as early as six or seven years. From six to twelve - wow spread of indicators, isn't it?
• Deep-set, dull eyes.
• Dirty pupils. Vision problems may occur.
• Soft back, belly down.
• Corns on elbows and hock.
• Dim, disheveled coat.

Now you know how to determine the age of a 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 is the fact that many indicators can vary greatly up to a year.