How to Tell a Dog’s Age from the Condition of its Teeth

by Jim McBean on February 1, 2010

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Today’s post about how you to roughly estimate the age of a dog by its teeth, will be helpful to people (like me) that have adopted a stray dog and don’t know the dog’s history or age.

When I adopted Zeus (a stray Pit Bull), the SPCA had him down as being 6 years of age. I felt pretty sure that number was incorrect; I would have put him at about 2 or 3 years of age.

I showed his picture to two sets of different people just randomly at the store I work at, and they both said they were sure that they knew the previous owners of Zeus (which kind of freaked me out!), and both said he was about 10 years old. There’s just NO WAY Zeus can be 10 years old!

Zeus has some light tartar on his canine teeth; using the methods below to guesstimate the age of a dog by looking at his teeth, Zeus should be between 3 and 5 years of age – more or less the age I suspected him to be. You can see pictures of Zeus here. Let me know if YOU think he looks like a 10 year old dog.

Puppy Teeth

A puppy’s baby teeth start coming in at about 6 weeks of age and fall out around 6 to 7 months of age. If all of the dog’s baby teeth are still present, that indicates that the dog is roughly 6 months of age or less.

Adult Teeth

If a dog has grown all of its adult teeth and the teeth are completely white, you’re probably look at a dog of about 1 year in age.

Staining of the canine teeth and molars typically happens between 1.5 and 3 years of age and tartar formation starts to build between 2 and 3 years of age.

A dog;

showing some yellow staining on the canines is about 1 to 2 years of age
with some tarter build up is between 3 and 5 years of age
with moderate tartar build up will be between 5 and 8 years of age
with severe tartar is probably 10 years old or more; older dogs will often have worn incisors and canine teeth or even some missing teeth

According to veterinarian Dr. James R. Talbott, determining a dog’s age by examining its teeth is not an exact science, but is in general, a good method for determining the age of a dog.

Do the methods above stack up when using them to identify the age of your dog by the condition of his/her teeth?

Why I Adopted a Pit Bull Named Zeus

Tagged as: canine dental health, determine dogs age from teeth, dog teeth, tell dogs age from teeth

Karen Friesecke

I think that this method probably works for most dogs. My mom had 2 pit bulls that were very heavy chewers and their teeth were always white and clean. Only when Star got to about 12 years of age did her inscisors start to show signs of wear.

Rod@GoPetFriendly

Interesting read. Is the staining based on a standard diet of kibble? Seriously, could a dog eating a raw food diet "hide" its age? I think that is what @robfdavis is saying. Something else I was wondering. Does a dog eating RMBs wear down its teeth faster OR strengthen them over a kibble fed pup?

Jim (Doggybytes.ca)

The staining is from tartar build up and will happen when feeding kibble, canned, ground raw, without giving them RMBs or appropriate chew toys to help clean their teeth.

It is possible I guess that a dog's teeth could wear faster eatng RMBs over kibble, but I would think the likely hood of premature wear would be caused more by harder bones such as knuckle bones and marrow bones. I no longer give hard inedible bones due to the danger of tooth breakage.

Robert

Good article and read! We have a rescue that was guesstimated at 6 months old by looking at the teeth. She is a sweety!

So if a dog eats Raw Meaty Bones and there isn't the tartar build up due to the cleaner teeth, couldn't that confuse a vet? I guess that is why it isn't an exact science :-)

Jim (Doggybytes.ca)

If you hover over the image above, the alt text reads, "those are raw fed teeth, baby!" =) Of course the dog in the pic is only a year and a half old though.