Reasonable expectation of effectiveness for large dog lifespan extension
loyalfordogs.com
loyalfordogs.com
I'd probably never get a big dog again unless I have a job for them to do.
She was an Australian shepherd / Great Pyrenees mix. A working dog, and for the first half of her life boy did we have to work her to get her happy. A mile a day is not enough for a big dog. Big dogs need regular activity, preferably throughout the day.
Failure to exercise a large dog properly leads to bad behavior, which is hard to correct because they _really want something to do_. So many people, not providing enough training nor enough job for their dog resort to using harnesses and other restraints when in public, and then when they have company over the dogs are reactive until they are put in the place where they can be out of the way.
Now, obviously this is anecdotal experience mixed with real world knowledge acquired through a dog trainer we have a long relationship with. But after all of this, I strongly feel most people with large dogs, especially in suburbs and cities, are doing those animals a disservice. Is your dog home alone for 8 hours a day? Woof…
Extending the life of an animal that is not performing the job it was literally bred to do is denying its nature. I'm not saying this to be convinced otherwise or that I'm 100% right, but now that I'm outside of the sphere of dog ownership I feel like I want to reflect in context of this otherwise incredible breakthrough.
Of course, keeping a dog alive longer with muscles and joints that have not been used properly throughout its life probably makes for a lucrative longterm pet care market opportunity…
This applies to working dogs (which is what an aussie shepherd is), not big dogs.
> Failure to exercise a large dog properly leads to bad behavior, which is hard to correct
This is correct
> because they _really want something to do_. So many people, not providing enough training nor enough job for their dog resort to using harnesses and other restraints when in public, and then when they have company over the dogs are reactive until they are put in the place where they can be out of the way.
This is arriving at the wrong diagnosis. Yes, a tired dog is a happy dog and not exercising your dog enough will lead to all sorts of issues, but reactivity (what you're describing) is not addressed by merely working your dog out more. If your dog is showing reactivity, rarely is it just a lack of exercise.
> I strongly feel most people with large dogs, especially in suburbs and cities, are doing those animals a disservice
A dog can be effectively exercised via a combination of physical activity and exercising their nose. It's widely observed that ~20min of sniffing exhausts a dog as much as ~60min of hard physical exercise. This is one of the first things a competent dog trainer will teach you with regards to exercise - if you're busy, hide a treat and send the dog searching. There are also, plenty of jobs you can teach a dog to keep them busy around the house, for example, fastidiousness. Teach a dog it's their job to ensure certain items are in a certain place at all times, and it will keep them mentally engaged throughout the day. This is ofcourse much easier done with some breeds (Akitas for example) than others.
The killer though was while camping and taking him on a hike for 5 miles and him sniffing all the sniffs? Totally wiped him out.
She broke down towards the end (hip issues) but managed 13 years before taking a final nap. I miss her dearly.
> ~20min of sniffing exhausts
which led to some weird imagery.
The universe of smell data that humans are blind to is fully stimulating to dogs.
During their golden years I would take them out in the car at least once a day to some part of a neighborhood they'd never been to as I figured it filled them with all sorts of interesting 'experiences' even if they could only manage a few blocks.
Is a snuffle mat sufficient.
If you haven't tried scent training, I highly recommend it. There's plenty of information online about it and it's really simple. You can even take a dog treat, put it in front of your dog, and say "find it." Keep moving the treat back until you get it out of sight. Then move on to hiding it in the couch, etc. My dog can find a tiny, 1 cm square of rubber in a huge grassy field. It's impressive.
Greyhounds are another… yes they can run incredibly fast for a half mile or so… and then they’re done. No stamina at all.
Alright that was fun, can we go back to napping?
My pit/greyhound mix has all the behaviors of a working dog. She likes routine, she'll herd you if she wants something, and she can run for miles for fun without breaking a sweat. She has security around the yard and the house, though it took a while to train her to replacing barking with pointing and to not engage in obnoxious/hazardous behavior while doing security. She does still need play time on top of that, but she'll bring you the rope when she's ready.
Folks, don't get working dogs if you don't have a job for them to do.
Does a Labrador retriever count? Terriers?
I'm hopeful that LOY-001 works (the article even specifically calls put Great Danes as a research target); I'd love to have a Great Dane since they're so easy-going, but the thought of losing one after such a short time has put me off.
Don’t get me started on organizations like the AKC that still promote breeding medical issues into dogs to achieve the proper nose shape or whatever so rich people can have tasteful eugenics as a hobby. It’s all very stupid.
I highly implore anyone considering a dog to be honest about what you can support, challenge your assumptions about why you love big dogs, and above all consider adopting over purchasing. I can forgive a lot of the rant above if the alternative was a big dog living in a shelter. That said, we’d have less big dogs in shelters if they weren’t so fetishized by inexperienced owners in the first place.
A lot of people try to get by on one brief walk in the evening to offset 8 hours of abstract/alien and sedentary desk work, while minimizing core human tasks like handling food or physically building things, and then puzzle over why they're so depressed, reactive, or otherwise neurotic. What you saw in your dogs lives is exactly what many people would do well to see in their own.
This is definitely true...in a single-dog household.
Treat it like dog ADHD. Working/fighting dogs don't want to sit still. Trapping them in an apartment all day, alone, will make them miserable. Would you be happy in solitary confinement?
But-- in my experience (huskies), stimulation appears to be just as effective as the vaunted exercise goals. Crazy as it sounds (and it is a lot of additional work and expense), getting a second husky keeps the first one busy. While she was left alone, she tore everything up and acted out a lot. Now they wrestle with each other all day, terrorize the cats together, and crash on the couch. A constant supply of new toys also helps.
(FWIW they're both rescues; I would never recommend huskies in small spaces, especially not around cats, as a conscious choice-- they're wolves in kabuki mask. Apparently everyone bought huskies because of Game of Thrones and dumped them on the streets once they became difficult. They're wolves. I'm having to build indoor chicken runs for the cats to traverse the house safely.)
I’ve often thought about this with my dogs… when they are being bad, it’s because I didn’t let them run enough or give them enough exercise or attention.
My wife and I had a 7 pound Yorkie from our local SPCA that died pretty recently. As a little dog, especially a Yorkshire terrier, he definitely had his medical bills. But outside of those expenses, our month-to-month costs were almost negligible. A $25 bag of food would last 8-10 weeks. Any medication we got him we broke in half or sometimes even quarters, because they literally didn’t make doses small enough for him, which meant any course of any medication was pretty cheap.
I mostly bring this up because a lot of people assume little dogs are incredibly expensive because of medical issues. They are not wrong per se, and breed matters a lot here, but there are plenty of small and healthy mutts that need good homes and your monthly budget for them is going to be much lower than what you need for some of larger dogs. Plenty of breeds are hypoallergenic, only need short walks, and are overall just not very demanding. Something to consider!
Hypoallergenic dogs are literally a lie, there's no such thing.
https://archive.nytimes.com/well.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/07/1...
I could’ve been more precise with my language I suppose.
>In fact, there may be no such thing as a low-allergy or allergy-free dog, according to a new report. The study found that the quantities of dog allergens in homes with supposedly hypoallergenic breeds are no different from those in homes with dogs widely considered non-hypoallergenic.
>Previous studies have examined dog skin and hair to determine the amount of allergens they contain, and have found wide variations among individual animals, but no consistent differences by breed.
>“I have no idea where this whole concept came from,” said Christine Cole Johnson, the senior author of the study, to be published online in The American Journal of Rhinology and Allergy. “It’s been around for a long time, and maybe people associated it with shedding. I think it’s just a legend.”
[0] https://www.akc.org/dog-breeds/australian-shepherd/ (see Personality then Energy Level)
I grew up with a lab/kelpie cross, on a 10 acre block with cattle and sheep on it, and he was fine snoozing most of the day because he could run around in the morning and afternoon until exhaustion every day. The other animals kept him active, and we walked him twice a day for a few kilometres total at the same time as other dogs were out for a walk.
[0] "In the wild" meaning feral dogs
Listen to your dog.
Find yourself a plot of trees and fields. Walk through them every day. Stand out in snow and rain. Listen to the noise the weather makes. Plant something you can eat every year. Pee on a tree. Make friends with a crow.
Life is too short to spend it surrounded by asphalt, cement, and tall buildings.
The next time you have a strong, but not dangerous, precipitation event, go somewhere you can't hear cars, wear protective gear (rain/cold) and stand out in the weather. As the scandies say, there is no bad weather, only bad clothing.
Listen.
Find your sound. I like the hiss of hard snow falling through pine trees.
Smell.
Take in the smells of the world around you as if you were smelling the nuances of a fine-cooked meal. Let your nose be your eyes and see how a dog sees.
Feel
Notice what the weather feels like when you are surrounded by it.
When you get back home, don't stop noticing sounds and smells. It will give you a better direction than staying in your head.
I understand what makes you think that big dogs in an apartment can be cruel, but I think that it's identifying the wrong problem.
Dogs need the right type of exercise and stimulation. Some of this is breed specific, the Aussie/Great Pyr mix up thread would probably have needs closer to my parent's Border Collie who needed (and got) double digit miles per day of movement. A Bernese Mountain Dog has lower energy needs.
As apartment dwellers we made sure that he walked many times a day, often in wilderness areas (an advantage of the PNW), but also often in dog parks, beaches, etc.
I've seen people who have gardens/yards assume that allowing their dog access to the yard is sufficient, rarely if ever walking them.
The key, as with almost all dog or pet issues, is the owner attitude, and has little to do with apartment vs house
We go out on long hikes in the timberlands when possible and they aren’t leashed and they’re great about being mindful of where I am and don’t stray too far and come back if I stop. That said they still have their harnesses on, for safety (people hunt there, blaze orange) but also there are unexpected situations that can happen.
Day to day they spend a 1-2 hours of active play in the backyard as well as intermittent play inside. If they aren’t getting enough exercise in they let you know it.
My biggest problem with the oldest one (9) is that the wear and tear on her body from being very active shows and she has a stupid pain tolerance. It is hard to try to engage her in low impact play when she is limping but still happy to sprint across the yard to catch a ball.
For truly big dogs, like a Pyrenees, their later years are really sad because their back tends to just give out on them and they have a ton of trouble just getting up and moving around.
The worst part of dogs is that they don’t live long enough but I’m also not personally interested in artificially extending my dogs lifespan, just making sure they aren’t suffering in their older age.
We didn't work it very hard, other than (almost) daily walks and occasional play. Mostly the dog just liked to be held and was very affectionate.
> I'd probably never get a big dog again unless I have a job for them to do.
My sister has a giant Bernese mountain dog, and it was bred to be a giant couch potato.
Let me do that in case anyone cares about the science.
The treatment is a proprietary drug to inhibit IGF1 signaling. If applied early in life (puppy stage) this would reduce growth rates and result in smaller adult body size. Lots of data on life and health extension via trimming back insulin-IGF signaling. But to the best of my knowledge, this should not be particularly effective later in life.
Later in life (1 year old pet mouse, 5 year old dog, 60 year old human) you would want to treat with intermittent rapamycin or other mTOR-C1 complex inhibitors.
This works very well in male and female mice and is now being tested by Matt Kaeberlein and many colleagues in dogs and humans.
There is a vibrant community of biohackers—-mostly rididulously healthy and relative rich and well informed humans older than 40, who are testing rapamycin at a mean dose of about 5 mg once per week. No marked negatives except what you would expect—somewhat less vigorous immune responses. You don’t want to take rapamycin if you are a 60-year-old kindergarten teacher!
See Matt’s site: https://mkaeberlein.com/off-label-rapamycin/
According to Celine, they will be eventually "claiming at least one year of healthy life span extension", so it looks like the effect will be moderate. Still interesting.
Dairy raises IGF-1 levels. This is why I think that getting too hooked on dairy products beyond age 50 is not a good idea.
So make large dogs live longer by turning them into smaller dogs, essentially?
It's funny that we humans seem to be sexually selecting ourselves to be taller and taller even though that seems to also cause shorter lifespans.
> mostly rididulously healthy and relative rich and well informed humans older than 40
That reads like promotion. Also, how is wealth implicated here?
A nbc news clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wc5CRvzzywU
That means each stage of trials for each drug would be 10+ years at best, possibly longer. With that time horizon, it's unlikely we'll get an approved life-extension drug in the next 50 years.
That all being said, I'd prefer a drug in 50 years to never. Maybe I won't personally benefit, but if my future grandchildren get a wonder drug, I'd still consider that a big win.
500 years of Putin - that would be fun.
A simple counterpoint: imagine a world were we all did live until 500 years old. And there were some bad dictators in that world. If you lived in that world, would you suggest cutting everyone's lifespan to 80 years old to diminish the power of those dictators?
Would you support cutting everyone's lifespan to 20 to diminish the power of those dictators?
If the people don't like the dictator, it's entirely in their power to remove the dictator. How exactly can one person stay in power over an entire nation of millions? It's only because the people there tolerate it.
If the society needs a lifespan limit to limit the damage dictators can do, the problem isn't the lifespan.
Or they're too poor to leave for greener pastures. Dictators are in power not because their people tolerate them, but because they don't have a choice in many cases. There's exceptions, but generally the stigmatized term "banana republic" aptly describes many of these places dictators control for a reason.
They absolutely do: they can rise up and revolt. How is a dictator going to stop them? He's one person. How exactly does one person stay in power over millions? No dictator in history has ever been a Marvel-comics-style supervillain with fantastical powers. Dictators stay in power because their people tolerate them.
What benefit would the rich derive by hoarding life extension drugs? Other people taking the same drug as you doesn't make your dose any less effective, nor vice versa.
It's just like software "piracy": once the information gets out, there's no way to stop it. Drugs aren't that difficult to manufacture, which is why lots of pharmaceuticals are manufactured, ignoring patent protections, in places like India.
Is your longevity drug going to be offered for free? Are you going to use taxes to pay for everyone's right to live?
Your scenario is a pure strawman - we all know that in the current social and economic system, anti-aging drugs are just going to worsen inequality...
They'll almost certainly be cheaper than the costs of treating the effects of aging.
Are you going to use taxes to pay for everyone's right to live?
We do this already.
we all know that in the current social and economic system, anti-aging drugs are just going to worsen inequality
This is extreme zero-sum thinking. Has chemotherapy worsened inequality?
Will they really reduce the medical costs of aging when you take into account the longer lifespan?
To borrow an argument from a different branch of the thread: if everyone lived to be only 20, would you expect that medical expenses would be more than they are today, or less?
No rational person is going to respect intellectual property rights for these sorts of substances and if they're relatively easy to produce then people will make them themselves.
Anyone who tries to stop the production and distribution of them will basically be killing people with more steps and people don't take too kindly to that.
These people may be living twice as long with these drugs while others die, but that doesn't make them immortal.
Russsia has a rich cultural history of assassinations. The long lived single party in Japan with the oldest population isn't immune to the disease of assassination either.
Russia has a rich culture of assassination.
Putin didn't kill any Russian leader, he is one.
Nicholas II has abdicated the throne so he wasn't in power when he was killed. Lenin was shot but survived. Trotsky was never in power.
All your examples flow from top to bottom, that is the leader of the country likely ordered them.
But your "zero worries" argument rests on bottom up assassination, and Aleksander II is the most recent one.
We do have to understand that humans are humans after all. Eventually you will get bored of the same nonsense day in and day out and do something else.
Just as silly as the people who somehow think a billionaire can't be bought and so make better politicians. Surely they became a billionaire because they have a reasonable relationship with money right? Surely you or I can relate to how they think of money!
An immortal Washington would not want to be the permanent head of state.
Oncology would like a word...(where lifespan extension is the expected endpoint)
If anything, the shock point is that the FDA allowed the claim without lifespan as a study endpoint/outcome, using only proxy measures.
I certainly hope someone does a follow up study to see if or how much lifespan is actually extended.
Imo, all such studies, human or animal should require large post approval RCTs
Cool product to learn about, large dogs are a blast a it would be lovely to have them live longer with us.
There's probably some cross-over too because some drugs are used in humans and pets. Gabapentin, for example, is something we use for our cats and a senior dog with arthritis. It also has uses for Restless Leg Syndrome.
But there's a possible treatment for FIP (a usually fatal disease in cats) that is undergoing approval by the FDA. Why an approval is required I don't know. [2]
While I'm reluctant to test unproven drugs on my pets, we had to say goodbye to a young cat in 2018 because he had FIP and this treatment wasn't available to us at the time. I'd have paid damn near anything to have given him a chance.
[1] https://www.fda.gov/consumers/consumer-updates/medicines-you...
[2] https://www.vet.cornell.edu/departments-centers-and-institut...
There is heaps and gobs of money in treating these guys. They only live a few years and are as personable as dogs. People regularly pay crazy amounts of money for intensive surgeries to take out tumors and fix their varying other ailments.
If someone managed to extend rat lifespans by even a year or two, there'd be a line of people at their door just begging to throw money at them. You'd think rat owners would be more blasé about death, but it couldn't be further from the truth.
Really though, for most illnesses they just get human drugs on a much smaller scale. My vet prescribes metacam when they're very sick, which is also what I got after my last surgery. They get the same antibiotics I've taken previously. Apart from the parasite drugs, I don't think my rats have ever been prescribed something I haven't taken before.
After all, there is a reason we use rats to model drugs in humans
Not even other rats benefit from animal experiments.
You could do worse than starting here: https://www.propublica.org/article/heres-why-rapid-covid-tes...
Regulators and regulations have problems, but the entire reason we have them is due to unregulated corruption that caused massive harm before the regulators were created.
Edit: Removed probably dumb and wrong rant about controlled pharmaceuticals
> Our interventional studies with LOY-001 showed that the drug improved clinically-relevant aging parameters. We assessed these in laboratory studies using a dog model that represents accelerated aging. We then correlated those results with quality of life scores in the observational study, as independently measured by dog owners, and health outcomes as measured by veterinarians. This was key to show that the biological benefits of the drug are linked to clinically relevant outcomes.
I also get the impression that within each species, large individuals seem to live shorter lives than smaller individuals (dogs, in particular). Up to about 6 feet or so, humans might be an exception, perhaps because being taller is associated with better childhood nutrition? But even among humans, above 6.5 feet or so, I think expected lifespan begins to fall?
Am I mistaken, or otherwise: Isn't this inversion kind of curious?
I also found this paper from 2013 that appears to make a similar claim: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3651517/.
Don't people who want large breed dogs want LARGE dogs?
(at least that seems to be the theory).
The very fine article suggests that over production of this hormone causes accelerated aging over the lifespan of the animal, I didnt go through exhaustively but I saw no indication that the drug was intended to make dogs smaller.
He was a breeder stud for a long while. I get compliments on him frequently, especially on his smaller size.
OK, but did it actually make them live longer? As far as I know they haven't done that study yet.
> This is unusual — very few if any other animals have such an extreme lifespan variation within the same species.
> Part of this lifespan disparity comes from the process of selective breeding that “created” these dog breeds.
And from wiki:
> A 2022 review found that both high and low levels of IGF‐1 increase mortality risk, whilst a mid‐range (120–160 ng/ml) is associated with the lowest mortality.[1]
we're increasingly seeing that mTOR/PPAR/metabolism aren't great targets for antiaging because you can't square the circle of worse quality of life over those increased years.
Mind you, I'm a dog lover. My Big Guy died last year aged 10 due to cancer. The thing people don't talk about is the little dogs get old enough to develop chronic health conditions. The last year and a half or so of my Jack Russel's life wasn't the best - her heart failure had reached stage 3, she had cataracts and was practically blind, she'd become largely incontinent. A longer life isn't all it's cracked up to be.
And also that they have easier access to euthanasia than most people. When my dog was suffering from terminal cancer, even the vet recommended euthanasia and it was easy to find a provider to come to my home to perform it there.
Typical lifespan of a wolf in captivity is ~15 yr (up to 20 in some cases), which is excellent for a "dog" that size.
And then there are puppy mills, which are on the polar opposite of the "fancy breed purity" spectrum, but equally horrific.
My overall inclination is pacifism and to focus on loving everyone, but I'd probably be OK with a discreet Tonya Harding'ing to the kneecaps of people running puppy mills.
It is sad that a combination of greed and elitism have doomed so many dogs in America to suffering.
There are a few breeds that have serious health problems, but the vast majority don’t.
I have an award winning show dog, and he’s strong, healthy, and happy. We are responsible in researching the right pairing for matings. We use pedigree research, DNA tests, and inbreeding coefficient calculators to ensure healthy offspring.
Responsible breeders exist, and in fact are a majority.
Are responsible breeders creating the majority of new puppies though?
If a random person goes to a random breeder and buys a dog, what are the odds that breeder is ethical and following best practices?
I'd bet it is less than 50%.
> There are a few breeds that have serious health problems, but the vast majority don’t.
My complaint was mostly focused on breeds where the breed standard is by definition unhealthy.
> We use pedigree research, DNA tests, and inbreeding coefficient calculators to ensure healthy offspring.
And the asshole outside of the city limits breeding puppies in his backyard is doing no such thing, but is still selling "pure bred poodles" that will have horrible behavioral problems and awful health.
At the end of the day, puppy mills exist because people buy from them.
Responsible breeders work hard with the respective breed groups to improve the health standards, and a lot of work is underway to introduce new bloodlines and standards to unhealthy breeds. That is not to say that all breeders are good breeders, or care much about dogs’ health, but there is a definitive push for change going on towards improving the standards.
Giant dog breeds humans have made rarely have such long life spans, with dogs like Saint Bernards, Great Danes and Irish Wolfhounds living 8 to 10 years.
That is living indoors, with access to regular medical checkups, and without parasites.
FWIW Wolves are huge, up to 160lb.
Wolves in the wild are lucky to make it to 7 years. A 12 year old wild wolf is exceptionally rare.
But 7 to 8 years is the upper bound of many large dog breeds who are pampered and have excellent medical care.
There are many large dog breeds that will never make it to 12, but a pampered wolf will.
My overall point is that even for the overall category of "large canine", we've reduced the lifespan of domesticated dog breeds.
We picked up our mostly black lab rescue (plus other 'stuff') as a puppy and mostly likely doesn't have some of the health problems that breeds can have.
I'm glad that I never went with my initial idea of getting a British bulldog. I see them wheezing and it just makes me sad.
The article explicitly calls out why this research is helpful: because we, as humans, have bred large dogs to die early as a side effect of their size.
It's really hard for me to understand why people are okay paying a dog breeder to perpetuate significant health problems. Plenty of owners are ignorant, but plenty of people fully understand that the Irish Wolfhound that they're going to purchase and grow to love will quite possibly die of old age in seven years, and that paying even a responsible breeder who's trying to minimize this problem will _still_ result in more dogs that die too young purely for our preferences.
And that's discounting the fact that most people simply don't have the will or the time to give a working dog the attention and stimulation that it needs to not be a neurotic mess.
(Rabbits and fancy goldfish have similar "live pretty, die young" problems. Probably a whole host of other animals - anything we've bred for shortened heads is likely to have breathing problems - including the Chihuahua).
This is a funny thought. I suppose dogs will drive themselves to social events, get jobs, and financially support their offspring.
However, I still agree with you: I think selective breeding of dogs is wrong. If they don't make good companion animals as they are naturally, then maybe people shouldn't try to turn them into such animals.