Dog 狗
Earth · Yang
Year of the Dog
The Dog is loyalty with a conscience. Fair-minded, protective, and honest to the bone, Dogs are the ones who actually show up — at the airport, at the hospital, at the argument where you needed one person on your side. They smell injustice early and cannot un-smell it. The shadow is worry and pessimism: a watchfulness that never fully clocks out, and a tendency to rehearse betrayal before it happens. At their best, Dogs are the moral spine of their circle — not the loudest voice, but the one everyone checks their compass against.
♥ In love
Devoted, steady, anxious in silence. A Dog needs reassurance spoken plainly and returns it a hundredfold in faithfulness.
◆ At work
Strong in justice-adjacent and guardian roles: law, medicine, security, nonprofits, HR done right. Cynical workplaces corrode a Dog faster than hard work ever could.
Compatibility
The Dog's trine allies are the Tiger & Horse — signs whose energy traditionally amplifies theirs. The clash opposite is the Dragon: friction that can teach, but takes work. Folklore, not fate.
Dog years
Zodiac years begin at 立春 (Start of Spring, around February 4) — January and early-February births usually belong to the previous animal. Our lookup corrects for this automatically.