Name: Ralph the dog's impact on science and his family
Uploaded: 2026-03-23T21:33:33.000Z
Duration: 6 min 6 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

This week on 60 Minutes we reported on the Dog Aging Project, a collaboration between dog owners, scientists,

and veterinarians to study dogs as they age.

Over 50,000 have participated so far, some suffering from dementia.

And the scientists working on the initiative, they hope that they can unlock the secrets of a longer, healthier life for humans.

To understand human disease and to be able to intervene and even prevent human disease, we have to find the right model.

And in dogs we think we have a really unique opportunity.

Dirk Keene is a neuropathologist from the University of Washington.

He believes studying dogs with dementia can help scientists gain new insights into diseases like Alzheimer's in humans.

Keene showed us how similar dogs' brains are to ours.

You can see the dog brain has the same frontal lobe, temporal lobe, occipital lobe.

It's the same basic shape as the human brain.

And it turns out that dementia changes brain size and structure in very similar ways in both humans and dogs.

As disease kills off neurons, the brain shrinks and the space in the middle cavity enlarges.

I mean, it looks like something has completely fallen out here.

While reporting this story, we met the Rowe family, Tara, her husband Jason, their young daughter Eloise, and

In 2024, they noticed a change in Ralph's behavior.

And just this last winter, he just couldn't calm down.

and he wouldn't even realize that it was right in front of him.

It's almost like you've got to hand it right to him for it to click.

Does he sort of wander around the house now?

In February 2025, Ralph took a cognitive test and was diagnosed with dementia.

He was then enrolled in the Dog Aging Project.

What do you want to have Ralph in the study?

You know, Ralph can be a part of a study that helps figure out what could work for dementia in dogs.

Let's get answers." And he seems like a really good candidate.

We were there last year when comparative psychologist Evan McLean and veterinary neurologist Stephanie McGrath tested Ralph's memory.

In this test, Ralph is shown where a treat is hidden and seconds later allowed to go get it.

The first time, Ralph quickly forgot about the treat, wandered off,

and picked up a piece of lint off the floor.

The second time, he walked up to McLean and then walked away.

The third time, he sniffed around and then wandered off again.

What did you see with Ralph during his cognitive test?

Well, so Ralph has clinically a more advanced form of dementia.

Even when we showed him exactly where it was, he had trouble remembering.

We went with the Rowe family when Ralph had an MRI of his brain.

So this is Ralph's brain, and he has dementia.

So that's the fluid that bathes your brain.

Normally, it should be kind of hard to see.

So it should be very scant, very hard to see, very subtle.

On Ralph's, you can see his brain has shrunken with the disease.

So as it shrinks, there's nothing left to do but fill in with fluids.

And you would see the same thing in human beings?

So you would see the same thing in human beings.

Is there anything you can do to help Ralph?

So that's what we're trying to understand.

Right now, just like in humans with Alzheimer's disease, there's no broadly effective treatment available.

But we're trying to understand whether there's certain medications, lifestyle changes, other things that we can be doing that may help either slow down the disease or even prevent or improve the signs once they show up.

Right now, in dogs, there's not much you can do to slow down the disease.

But after his death, scientists were able to learn more from him.

Julie Moreno, a molecular biologist from Colorado State University, helped conduct a pilot study of the drug rapamycin with 12 dogs, all with signs of dementia.

One group of dogs, including Ralph, were fed a pill containing rapamycin.