COLLEGE STATION, Texas — Doctors Kate Creevy, Matt Kaeberlein and Daniel Promislow are looking for dogs to participate in the Dog Aging Project, a study hoping to gain insight on the health of dogs and humans.
They all spoke at a Monday morning forum to talk about it at A&M, touching on how it would be a citizen's science project, meaning that all it takes for a dog to participate is their owners filling out an online survey.
“What we’re going to do is watch these dogs for the rest of their lives to learn what are the biological and environmental factors that determine how well a dog ages,” said Dr. Promislow, a Co-director of the Dog Aging Project.
The researchers intend on spending at least a decade on this study to not only lengthen dogs’ lives, but maybe their owners’ too.
“Dogs age about seven times faster than people do. So in a ten year period, we can understand what are the most important determinants of major diseases of aging,” said Matt Kaeberlein, also Co-director of the Dog Aging Project.
A big factor in that, according to Dr. Promislow, is that dogs "share our environment. So whatever we discover about environmental factors that might help dogs age in a better way are likely to be environmental factors that can help us age in a better way.”
Once they figure out what those factors are, they’re hoping to find preventive measures to keep Fido healthier longer, and they want as many dogs as possible to help them out.
Dogs of all sizes, ages and breeds are welcome to participate, with no cap on nominations.
Owners can register them on the Dog Aging Project website.
As of Monday morning, more than 55,000 dogs from all 50 states have signed up for the study.
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