狗 狗

The Dog is the sign of loyalty, and of the particular kind of loyalty that comes with worry attached: honest to a fault, protective, deeply uneasy about people it has not decided about yet. Every list of the twelve puts the Dog somewhere near the top for trustworthiness and somewhere near the bottom for relaxation.

It came eleventh, having reached the river first and then spent the afternoon swimming in it, because the water was good. Nobody in three thousand years has found this out of character.

Two of them here, one carried on the other's back — a bronze rhyme with the Rat riding the Ox at the start of the cycle, painted in gold line on the darkest ground in the collection.