actually, michele - i hope you don't mind my telling you this- but most people these days have finally come to understand that the "dog year" equation isn't really valid. in the life of a dog, the first year equals oh, let's say about 12-15 years...eg, during the first year, the dog becomes sexually mature. then, by the end of the first year, the dog can be considered a young adult....say, about 18-20 years old. after that, well...you can take the average lifespan of the breed and do some fancy calculating...like, ok, poodle will live 15 years (just an example), people live 80 years, so...if it's "20 years old" after 2 years of life, that leaves 60 more people years to be lived over 13 more calendar years, so each "dog year" would equal about 5.1 "people years"....Whew! too much trouble for me!!! and it's not a perfect equation this way, either. for ferrets, well, they hit puberty pretty young, bet 5-9 mos, let's say at 6 months for ease of calculations. say they live, on average, 8 years. ok, well...15 yrs at age 6 mos, then in the next 7.5 years they get to live 65 people years...that's about 8 "people years" to 1 "ferret year"... now, personally, i don't put much stock in these equations. i think our furry/feathered/finned/whatever friends are all so different and have such different physiology/metabolism/etc (even though in many ways they're similar to us, as well...) that we should just let them live out their lives in calendar years, and not try to squeeze them into our framework. as long as an owner knows when to expect, say, onset of geriatric problems or whatever, that's probably enough info. i prefer to just enjoy my pets without wondering if they're as old as aunt hilda yet...:) what do you guys think? [Posted in FML issue 1328]