A cohort is a group of individuals that share some common feature or features. In the Dog Aging Project, different cohorts are different groups of dogs with characteristics that allow us to ask and answer specific scientific questions.
For example, if we wanted to know how daily exercise affects health, we might want to compare dogs who engage in different daily physical activities such as leash walks, swimming, or playing fetch. If this were our scientific question, the research cohort would include dogs who participate in the mentioned activities, but it would exclude dogs who do not participate in these activities. This doesn’t mean the second set of dogs aren’t interesting to study; it just means they aren’t the right dogs to study for that particular question.
The Dog Aging Project consists of multiple scientific cohorts. Currently these include the Dog Aging Project Pack, the Foundation Cohort, the Precision Cohort, and TRIAD, each of which provides unique and valuable insights into the aging process.