I have a question about the age of my new Rottweiler. We just adopted her yesterday from the animal shelter in town. I absolutely love her because she is just about the nicest and cutest dog I've seen in my life.

The problem is that since she was a stray that was found wondering in the county, her exact age is unknown. We haven't gotten her to the vet yet, as we just adopted her yesterday, but will have to before long to have her spayed. The thing is, the animal shelter was guessing her to be about three years old. We accepted that at first but as we had her home yesterday we got to wondering about her exact age. We've had several dogs in the past and from what we've noticed of Gracie (our rottweiler) she seems to have a lot of puppy like tendencies, although from what I've read most of them seem to just go with her breed. The part that I'm wondering about is her size. I read a few other posts on here about Rottweiler sizes and looked at charts and I don't think Gracie is anywhere near three years old, unless she is just very small. Currently she is only 51 pounds, about 28-29 inches around the chest, and about 23-24 inches tall at the shoulder. From what I've read it seems that would put her more at about 5-6 months old. I'm not entirely sure as I've never had a Rottweiler before nor have I ever actually seen one up close, outside of Gracie of course.

I was just hoping to find out about how old you think she could be from her measurements. I assure you she is very healthy. She has a nice waist line and is very muscular. That's why I'm wondering about how old she is, because we thought she would be fairly larger than that to be three. I'll try to add a picture before long if that will help.

One thing I have noticed is if a puppy is under 1 yr their paws tend to be pretty big for their size. If she looks like she has 'room to grow' she is probably less than 2 yrs old.
I would get her to the vet asap because I think it is easier to get an idea of age before they do get into their 3 to 8 year old stage. Most likely the vet will still only be able to come within three to six months of her actual age. My vet said they guessed my pit bull to be around 6 months old and said why not just give her New Years eve as a birthday.