Having a dog is a wonderful, love-filled experience that, by its nature, is too short. No matter what point you are at in your life, you will probably live longer than your dog. And this gap leads to many tears and broken hearts.

But what if your dog’s life could be extended by a few years? And what if, instead of just more years of old age and decay, your dog actually appeared and felt younger as its final days approached?

Well, scientists are bringing a drug, rapamycin, designed to prolong life to the next trial phase. And the test subjects for this phase happen to be dogs.

So far the drug has been demonstrated to extend the lives of mice by, essentially, delaying the aging of cells. And by addressing the underlying mechanism of aging, the process also suppresses a range of age-related diseases such as cancer, heart disease and stroke.

It’s often forgotten that age is the single biggest risk factor for nearly all maladies, and age is generally viewed as an immutable fact of life that can only be disguised, never addressed.

So a drug that claims to prolong life--and youth--is greeted with skepticism. Most of the time, health funding is allocated to better understand specific diseases such as cancer. The blanket concept of aging seems too vague. 

And there are criticisms that it is unethical to be funding “anti-aging” when people are dying from Malaria and Cholera. 

But as scientists who study aging--a field known as geroscience--emphasize, drugs that target aging end up targeting a range of other afflictions, and, therefore, are worth investing in to improve overall human health.

Ultimately, scientists want to be able to use the drug, rapamycin, in a human trial, but further data has to be gathered before funding and permission are received.

In mice, the drug extended life spans by around 20%-25%.

A similar benefit for dogs, which live roughly 10 to 13 years, would add 2 to 3 more years of healthy life. For dog owners, that's a very meaningful amount of time.

My dog Teddy

And that’s one of the reasons why scientists decided to test the drug on dogs--it will automatically generate a lot of intrigue.

For humans, a similar benefit would yield about two decades--an enormous amount of time.