Can we keep dogs alive forever?
Dogs are known as Man’s best friend. This phrase is somewhat untrue considering every dog I have ever met has tried to bite my left ear off. It is also certainly sexist because all these same dogs that want to go Mike Tyson on my ear seem to love my sister. The spirit of the phrase remains true, though, as humans and dogs share a strong bond. This article attempts to address a fundamental issue in the friendship between dogs and people. The average dog lives for 10 to 13 years while the average human lives 79 years. Using some fancy college arithmetic, this means a human can own somewhere near 7 dogs in their lifetime. Of these dogs, one of them will be way cooler than all the rest; let’s call this one Rocky.
Wouldn’t you like to keep Rocky alive forever? Surprisingly, scientists don’t seem to feel the same way. Those feline loving eggheads would rather focus on developing GMO corn and tempurpedic mattresses than helping you keep your favorite dog alive. Despite the lack of academic support and government funding, I have devised a few ways to extend the life of your canine companion indefinitely.
As an educated reader, you have probably heard of the water cycle. If you take old dirty water and put it outside, it will eventually evaporate and will come down later as clean rain. Now take that same concept and apply it to dogs and you get The Dog Cycle. If you can vaporize and re-condense Rocky, a full rotation of the Dog Cycle, then he will be like new. I do not think you should try this in any way that might hurt your dog. Instead, I think positive reinforcement is the best route. Dogs will do anything for a treat, so promise your dog a treat if he changes himself to a gaseous state, and he will probably do it.
I re-watched the movie Interstellar recently, and (SPOILER ALERT) Matthew McConehuw goes to space and then comes back and he is still young, but his daughter is way older than him. I think this has to do with Einstein inventing time travel back in 1922. But there was a bunch of weird stuff going on where he let himself fall into a black hole and somehow didn’t die immediately. Then he uses the power of love to do some math for his daughter that ends up saving all of humanity. Does this mean spaceships run on love now? Really that ending felt like a slap in the face to Stephen Hawking, and that’s disappointing since I do really like the movie overall. Anyways, I think if we send dogs to space they will be young forever.
Keeping our dogs alive forever would indeed solve all of our problems and keep us from experiencing the feeling of loss for our whole lives. Ideally the technology could scale to keep all dogs alive, except pugs of course. This is why I encourage readers to ask your local representatives about their stance on dogs and why I encourage you to re-watch interstellar and think about if it is as good as when you saw it in the theater.
Ian Kranz ’19
