So what would it be like if dogs could live forever - and what if that secret could help their owners live longer, healthier lives too?
A number of companies are now finding common ground between the two goals. Early next year, Loyal, a US biotech startup, is confident that it will bring to market LOY-002, a daily, beef-flavored pill that could give dogs a minimum of one extra year of healthy life.
The San Francisco-based firm has raised $125m (£100m) in funding from companies that have held back from investing in human longevity projects because of the decades those trials would take.
But Celine Halioua, founder and chief executive of Loyal - which is part of Cellular Longevity, a biotech firm - believes its work will benefit humans. "Finding out how to prevent canine age-related decline is a really strong proxy for doing the same with humans because dogs get similar age-related diseases, and share our environments and habits in ways laboratory mice do not," she said.
The LOY-002 pill aims to blunt and reverse metabolic changes associated with aging: reducing frailty by curbing aging-related increases in insulin.
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