The Daily Parker

Politics, Weather, Photography, and the Dog

Studying how dogs age

How did I miss this Times article from November?

Lab tests can tell how old a human is just from the pattern of methylation. Thanks to this research, the same can be done for dogs. The results will help researchers studying aging in dogs to translate findings to humans. None of this research was done on dogs kept in a laboratory. All of the dogs in the aging comparison study were pet Labrador retrievers and the owners gave permission for blood samples.

Scientists are unsure about whether the physical decline seen in aging in dogs and humans, in fact in all mammals, is related to the process of development in earlier life, or whether the decline is a different process altogether. The researchers found that the pattern of methylation suggested that the same genes may be involved in both processes.

Good methods of comparing dog and human ages are important. Dogs are increasingly seen as good models for human aging because they suffer from it in many of the same ways humans do. As the Dog Aging Project, which is collecting genetic and other information from a vast number of pet dogs, puts it on its website, the goal of the research is “Longer, healthier lives for all dogs … and their humans.”

I miss my aging dog. And the day this article was published, Parker was old indeed.

Today's daily Parker

I thought to end the two-week run of Parker puppy photos with one of a game he invented. When he put the ball right between his paws like that, my job was to try grabbing it from him. He would try to pick it up. Since he had lots of teeth and I just had a hand, he would always win. Then, when he wanted me to toss it again, he'd roll it over to me with his nose.


18 April 2007

I miss him.

Today's daily Parker

Parker often couldn't quite decide what parts of his body should hang off his bed when he wanted to stretch out, making this a fairly common scene (14 October 2008):

He seemed comfortable enough, though.