Chinese Zodiac Dog — personality, years & compatibility

The Dog is the keeper of the night: asking neither if the house is rich or poor, honoring only its charge. Classical texts assign it "the loyalty of yang earth" — the embodiment of "trustworthiness" among the twelve, the very "strength" in knowing a horse by the long road.

Its strengths are loyalty, integrity, responsibility, and being first to arrive in trouble; its weaknesses are anxious fault-finding and carrying other people’s burdens as its own — loyal to the point of stubbornness. The lesson worth teaching a Dog: guard yourself first, then others.

In love the Dog is devoted and protective — once decided, for life; jealousy and protectiveness share one root. In work it suits disciplined and protective callings: service, law, security, public welfare, operations. A Dog’s reputation is a slow variable that compounds with time.