Dog

The Dog in the twelve-animal cycle

The Chinese zodiac is an ordering of years. Twelve animals follow one another in a fixed sequence, each giving its name to a year in turn, and when the last has passed the round begins again. The Dog stands eleventh in that order, after the Rooster and before the Pig, which closes the cycle. The sequence has been used for many centuries across China and, in local forms, across much of East and Southeast Asia, both as a way of reckoning years and as a way of talking about them.

The animals are the popular face of an older system of counting. Twelve earthly branches pair with ten heavenly stems, and because the two series are of unequal length, a given combination of stem and branch returns only once in the longer sixty-year round. The stems are grouped with the five elements, so each turn of an animal carries an elemental pairing as well, and a Dog year is named by both. Almanacs, chronicles, and inscriptions have used these compound names for a very long time, which is why the cycle functions as a calendar and not only as a set of images.

Each occurrence of the sign runs from one lunar new year to the day before the next, so the animal of a year does not line up with a Gregorian year. The table above gives the computed boundaries and pairings for the range this page covers.

What the tradition associates with the Dog

In the tradition, the Dog is above all a figure of loyalty. Readings of the sign put fidelity at its centre: the friend who stays, the companion who keeps faith when keeping it costs something. The tradition joins this to honesty of speech, describing the Dog as forthright, more inclined to say plainly what it sees than to say what would be easier to hear.

Alongside loyalty, the tradition attaches a strong sense of justice to the sign. The Dog is spoken of as quick to notice unfairness and reluctant to let it pass, and as protective of the people and places in its care. Watchfulness belongs to the same reading, drawn from the dog at the gate: alert, attentive to what approaches, dependable through a long night. Diligence is counted among the sign's qualities too, along with a practical competence that the tradition treats as unshowy rather than slight.

The tradition does not paint the sign as untroubled. It records that the same watchfulness can turn inward and settle into worry, and that a sign so attentive to fairness can find the ordinary compromises of the world hard to accept. Warmth sits in the reading nonetheless: the tradition holds the Dog to be generous with those it trusts, modest in its own claims, and steady in plain duties over long stretches of time.

These are readings the tradition carries, recorded and retold over centuries. They describe the sign, not any person born in its years.

Festivals, names, and the turn of the year

A Dog year is welcomed with the same customs that greet any animal of the cycle. In the weeks around the lunar new year the incoming animal appears wherever it can be drawn: on papercuts pasted to windows, on lanterns, on greeting cards and gift boxes, and on the commemorative stamps that many postal services issue for the year. The animal also supplies the language of good wishes exchanged at the festival, so in a Dog year it is the Dog that is being greeted and set at the door.

The cycle serves as a way of speaking about age without stating one. In Chinese it is ordinary to say which animal one belongs to, and the sign works as a shorthand in conversation and in family memory. When the cycle brings a person's own animal round again, that year is called their bencomingnian in transliteration of the Mandarin term for the year of one's birth sign; custom treats it as a year for extra care, and red is the usual answer, in the form of a red cord at the wrist or waist, red clothing, or red items received as gifts from relatives rather than bought for oneself.

Because the cycle turns at the lunar new year and not at the start of the Gregorian year, a Gregorian year and a zodiac animal do not cover the same span. Someone born in the first weeks of a Gregorian year, before the lunar new year has arrived, belongs to the animal of the preceding cycle year, which for a Dog year means the Rooster. This is why the sign for a birthday is worked out from the lunar new year boundaries, as the table on this page does, rather than read off the Gregorian year alone.

Years of the Dog

Each year begins at the lunar new year and ends the day before the next one.