I had to laugh the other day when I read a sign at the local gift shop. It read, “In dog years, I have only had one”. It had a mug of beer on the sign and I thought that was quite clever. This refers to the fact that people say that for every one year, a dog lives seven. I am not sure how anyone came up with this equation but it seems to be a saying that has been around as long as I can remember. This got me thinking about how things age in general. Take your car for instance, if you rarely drive it, care for it, and always have regular check ups, it is not going to age as quickly as someone who uses theirs more frequently or doesn’t care for it. Would you say that some cars “age” more quickly than others. If you really start thinking about it, this applies to most areas and things in life. Even our own bodies “age” more quickly if not taken care of properly. The funny thing is, this discussion came up at my house the other day with regards to our HVAC system. We started talking about our upcoming maintenance appointment and realized just how long ago we had put in the current system we have. There didn’t seem to be anything wrong with our HVAC system and we had always had routine maintenance done. In reality it was over twenty years old but still worked like a champ. It was then that I thought about the sign in the gift shop. I said “in dog years, the system is only three years old”. My husband just looked at me like I was crazy and laughed.