Lunar Zodiac · The Moon's Cycle
Dog
“Best swimmer in the race, and stopped for a wash.”
Polarity: yang · Direction: west · Element: earth
The Dog is loyalty, honesty and a working sense of justice. It defends the people it has taken on, says the awkward true thing rather than the comfortable one, and holds a standard of fairness that it applies to itself first. Anxious under the surface, steady on it, and almost impossible to buy. Its finish is the funniest result in the story and the most revealing. The Dog was the strongest swimmer in the field and should have placed near the front. Instead it treated the river as the best water it had seen in weeks, stopped partway to bathe and play, and wandered in eleventh, second to last, having beaten almost nobody. The Jade Emperor asked what had happened, and the answer amounted to the river being too good to hurry through. Nothing about it was laziness. The Dog simply did not think winning was the point of a river. Dog people are the friends who turn up, defend the absent, and remember who was kind. They are principled, funny, and quietly worried about more things than they let on. The cost is the distraction on the crossing: a nature that will not optimise its own position, and that watches less deserving people finish ahead of it with a mixture of genuine indifference and a grievance it insists it does not have.
Years of the Dog
A Dog year opens at Chinese New Year, which falls between late January and the middle of February, so it does not line up with the calendar year. Anyone born in the weeks before it belongs to the animal before.
- 1922January 28, 1922 to February 15, 1923
- 1934February 14, 1934 to February 3, 1935
- 1946February 2, 1946 to January 21, 1947
- 1958February 18, 1958 to February 7, 1959
- 1970February 6, 1970 to January 26, 1971
- 1982January 25, 1982 to February 12, 1983
- 1994February 10, 1994 to January 30, 1995
- 2006January 29, 2006 to February 17, 2007
- 2018February 16, 2018 to February 4, 2019
- 2030February 2, 2030 to January 22, 2031
- 2042January 22, 2042 to February 9, 2043
Dog Ancient Zodiacs
Every sign someone born in the Year of the Dog can be, one for each Western sun sign.
- Hyena: Aries Dog, “Misjudged on sight, and right about the thing anyway.”
- Groundhog: Taurus Dog, “Reliable enough that a whole country checks on it.”
- Fox: Gemini Dog, “Loyal as a dog, and working strictly alone.”
- Clam: Cancer Dog, “Closed to strangers, open for life to the right person.”
- Wolf: Leo Dog, “Leads the way a parent leads, which is the only way that lasts.”
- Crane: Virgo Dog, “Pairs for life, and rehearses the dance every year.”
- Turkey: Libra Dog, “Better than its reputation, and fairer than the winner.”
- Bee: Scorpio Dog, “Will spend everything it has on the hive, once.”
- Coyote: Sagittarius Dog, “Run out of every town, and now living in all of them.”
- Sparrow: Capricorn Dog, “Plain, dutiful, and quietly everywhere that matters.”
- Otter: Aquarius Dog, “Serious about fairness, incapable of being solemn.”
- Dolphin: Pisces Dog, “Knows your name, and invented one for itself.”