Year of the Dog狗

The Dog holds the evening hours, when the household is guarded rather than active, and the reading follows exactly: this is the sign of watchfulness on behalf of others.

Loyalty here is not softness. The Dog is the most moralistic of the twelve — the sign that judges situations by whether they are fair and acts on the answer, sometimes at cost to itself. Chinese descriptions treat the Dog as the one you want as a friend and do not want as an opponent.

The weakness recorded is worry. A sign built to watch for threat finds threat, and the texts describe the Dog as prone to anxiety and to taking on burdens that are not its own.

Occupationally the Dog is placed in law, security, medicine, teaching and activism — work organised around protecting or defending. The sign is considered unsuited to roles requiring moral flexibility.

Dog years are read as years when fairness becomes the question, in public matters as much as private ones. Chinese practice associates them with disputes being settled rather than avoided.

The Dog's triangle is with the Tiger and the Horse, the direct signs. The Dog supplies principle to that set — the question of whether a thing is right, asked while the other two are already moving. It is the moral centre of the group and occasionally its brake.

Dogs occupy a genuinely divided place in Chinese tradition: guardians and companions in some regions and periods, and considerably less regarded in others. What is consistent is the association with loyalty and with guarding a threshold. The eleventh branch is the evening watch, when the household is secured, and the sign is read entirely through that role.