Dog

Meaning

The Dog is the eleventh of the twelve animals, the animal of the branch Xu: Earth, yang, the last month of autumn and the evening, when the house is shut and someone keeps watch. The dog has guarded Chinese homes and fields for thousands of years, and the tradition reads in it the faithfulness of the guardian: a friend who stays, a sense of what is right, a protective care for those it loves.

Ulune’s portrait reads it as loyal, honest and just: it defends its friends and its principles, and can be trusted completely; sincere and protective, it is happiest serving something it believes in. Its gifts are faithfulness, integrity, a sense of fairness and devotion. What the tradition asks it to watch is the guard’s vigilance turned inward: worry and pessimism, and seeing the world in black and white.

Its branch is a storehouse, the dry earth of late autumn that keeps the year’s Fire for the winter, and the Dog is read as a keeper of warmth and of trust: the hearth looked after, the promise kept, the cause not abandoned when the season turns cold. Its phase is Earth, steadiness and reliability.

In practice

• As the year animal, the Dog is how others see a person and the generation they share: those born from Lichun 2018 to Lichun 2019 are Earth Dogs, from Lichun 2030 Metal Dogs.
• As the inner, true and secret animal: as the month animal, Ulune reads the Dog’s sense of justice inside, a need to believe in what one does and in the people one does it with; as the day animal, a partner loyal and protective, for whom trust matters above everything; as the hour animal, a guardian who worries for those they love.
• The five Dogs: the Wood Dog is the most easy-going, a friend for life, the Fire Dog the boldest, the Earth Dog the steadiest, the Metal Dog principled and unbending, the Water Dog the most understanding. Wood came in 1934 and 1994, Fire in 1946 and 2006, Earth in 1958 and 2018, Metal in 1970 and comes in 2030, Water in 1982.
• Its relations: the Dog’s allies are the Tiger and the Horse, its trine of Fire; its partner in harmony is the Rabbit. It clashes with the Dragon, harms the Rooster, belongs to the punishment of power with the Ox and the Goat, and forms a destruction with the Goat.
• In time: the Dog’s own years return every twelve, 2030 and 2042; a Dragon year such as 2036 is its clash year; a Horse year such as 2026 is an allied one, as are the Tiger’s and, in harmony, the Rabbit’s.

Across traditions

• In Japan the Dog is inu; in Korea gae; in Vietnam chó, of the branch Tuất. Japan’s most famous dog, Hachikō, went to Shibuya station every evening for nearly ten years to wait for a master who no longer came home, and has a statue there.
• Ancestors and eclipses: some peoples of southern China, the Yao and the She, trace their origin to Panhu, a heroic dog, as the Hou Hanshu records; and folk belief imagined a heavenly dog swallowing the Moon at an eclipse, chased off with drums until it let go.
• In the West the faithful dog is Argos, who alone recognises Odysseus after twenty years; and the brightest star of the night, Sirius, is the Dog Star, whose dawn rising gave the hottest days of summer their name, the dog days.

Origin and history

The Dog is the animal of Xu in Wang Chong’s Lunheng, in the 1st century, which says that Xu is Earth and its creature the dog. Dogs were among the first animals kept in China, and the Shang laid them to rest beside their owners, as guardians for the other world. Popular books explain the Dog’s place by the hour: Xu is the evening, when the house is shut and the dog keeps watch.

BaZi’s classics read the branch Xu, a storehouse of Fire, rather than the Dog itself. The Dog’s portrait as it is known now, the loyal and honest guardian, is that of popular books of the 20th century in Chinese, English and French, such as Theodora Lau’s Handbook of Chinese Horoscopes (1979).

How Ulune calculates it

The Dog is the branch Xu: a year, month, day or hour whose pillar’s branch is Xu is a Dog. Ulune counts the Dog year from Lichun and gives the other answer when Chinese New Year would differ; the Dog month runs from Hanlu, about 8 October, to Lidong in early November; the Dog hour from 19:00 to 21:00 on true solar time. On Ulune’s wheel the Dog stands at the west-north-west, opposite the Dragon. Its portraits, with its five phases and its places, are Ulune’s own texts, written from what popular books commonly say.

Correspondences