Animal Forecast 2015: 11. Barking Restricted, outlook for the Dog in 2015

Who is a Dog?

Years: 1946, 1958, 1970, 1982, 1994, 2006.
Month*: October
Hour: 07:00 pm – 09:00 pm
Day: ask us
* Caution: the start of the Chinese month can be as early as the 4th & as late as the 9th, depending on the year. I can let you know this too.

What is a Dog?
The Dog is yang earth and a byword for good faith and consistency. Terriers and Rotweilers are both fierce and loyal. In mediaeval heraldry and Renaissance painting, the Dog in the form of the greyhound, symbolises constancy.

So a Dog can be expected to revere tradition and have a strong family background. If a Dog commits to something they can generally be relied upon to see it to completion. The difference between male and female Dogs can be that the female gets the message quicker. Interesting to note that Kate Middleton and Prince William are twin Water Dogs of 1982; a very solid match because as a yang earth sign, the Dog is pretty immovable, an ideal best friend or protector. These two are, first and foremost, good friends.

The Dog’s thinking may not always be flexible but when he gets an idea, he really gets it. His natural grouping is with the hunters, the Horse and Tiger. The apportionment of tasks here is obvious: the Horse provides pace and the Tiger ferocity while the Dog watches the rear. If HR people studied Chinese metaphysics, more workplaces would zing: in business the Horse will tend to be the sales person, the Tiger the closer or credit controller and the Dog the provider of after-sales service or er…HR department.

The Dog excels at service because he never gives up. He will return your phone calls and keep that appointment. You’re the friend who sends a card every birthday and the spouse who remembers every anniversary. You care.

The Dog also, perhaps surprisingly, mixes well with the gentle diplomatic Rabbit. The Rabbit schmoozes while the Dog ensures that his colleague’s openness is not abused. The Dog makes a wonderful bodyguard and middle manager. A Dog employer will have achieved that position by sheer hard work and will demand the same from all around.

The Dog doesn’t like the Dragon because he’s such a smarty pants. Also the Dog can feel insecure around success without effort* and the Dragon creates with such apparent ease. You’re suspicious of magic. So you’re often not so keen on the mini-Dragon, the Snake either; you’d even resent the Horse (too damn flighty) except that you are scrupulously loyal to your own team#.

An unbalanced Dog is a bit of a shop steward. He knows his rights and the way things should be – often that’s the way they always have been btw. An unbalanced Dog (such as one with an October or mid-evening birth) is just too respectful. The smart Dog learns to ask questions.

The Dog will often have a strong spiritual agenda and if he has a blind spot it may be an inability to respect the difference between religion and spirituality or spirituality and therapy. Because this means he sticks to his guns, the Dog is suited both to new age therapy and religious persecution. He will not be thrown off by the opinions of others once he has committed to a line of action. In fact the unbalanced Dog can be thick skinned in matters of belief. Some Dogs would be ideally suited to being a Grand Inquisitor. The problem is that his motto ought to be “Do as you would be done by,” and he thinks it already is.

The Dog can work well with other Dogs and with the Pig. With the Pig he shares a love of home and team and they are so different they don’t crowd each other. Sometimes the Dog and Pig can be telepathically close; this is because they are adjacent signs in the calendar linked by the yang earth that is a feature of both. Sometimes this earth is expressed by banter or earthy humour. They can have a lot of fun together while getting the job done.

But the most powerful and most demanding role the Dog can play is in a creative team including the irritating Dragon, the autocratic Ox and the soft Sheep. If the Dog acts as conscience and bookkeeper, the Ox will relax, the Sheep toughen up and the Dragon acknowledge someone else for a change. If you are a Dog recruiting for non-executive directors, take note. What is great about the Dog is that if you find advice that works you will adopt it as if it were religion. Bless.

*Consider 1970 Dog George Osborne and his “hard-working families” trope.

# David Cameron: 1966 Horse

Dog in Wood Sheep Year

Stars include: Moon.

Classically the meeting of Dog and Sheep is a break-up. This year has that about it; it’s possible that certain key assumptions in your life are false. If so by the way, they only reflect your inner truth. If the premises you act on are in error, you’re only deceiving yourself.

Such break-ups can be literal or figurative. And they’re all both healthy (in the great scheme of things) and preventable. The Dog’s big weakness is not questioning enough. You may believe your constancy is reflected in the outside world. And it’s not that good is not reflected everywhere but that what’s good and bad is a question of viewpoint. Some people find tickling painful and some enjoy being tied up and whipped. Apparently. There are, dare I say it, more than fifty grades of chi.

But the Dog is also a key player in the central dynamic of 2015, the Year of Gathering: the so-called “Bullying Punishment.” This fracas occurs when Ox and Sheep meet Dog. It’s a misunderstanding but often it looks like the most hideous confrontation. And obviously in a Sheep year it’s going to happen a great deal if only because the Sheep in the calendar is going to collide with real Dog and Ox people in Ox and Dog hours, days and months. When the punishment is sustained it speaks of damage; a ba zi with these characters early in life will need a great deal of love later on to straighten it out. It’s quite likely – but not certain – that you’re one of them.

So this year you deal with break-up of some sort. It could be relationship – especially if you were born on a Dog day – but it doesn’t have to be. That depends on the way you conduct the relationship. It is at least as likely a bust-up with a long-established client, customer or colleague, especially if your birth was in October, the Dog Month. And watch for the hardest one: birth hour between 7&9pm implies possible estrangement from your kids, your future dreams or both. The solution: trust yourself, be gentle and question everything.

And meanwhile the Bullying Punishment rages around you. The Sheep brings gathering, a drawing-up of lines. Teams form, families close ranks, marriages are re-committed to. And armies grow. You are likely to be personally involved; hardest-hit in July and October of course but you’ll already know from the events of January 2015 that January 2016 will test you as much. The inflexibility of the Ox will clash with the slavishness of the Sheep wherever you go. Arguments will break out about nothing – because they are about nothing; nothing that’s here and now and present at least. And both Sheep and Ox will tend to be in your face. These may be the actually astrologically cloven-hooved or people and situations that embody this tension. the Ox often stands for religion – with whose rigidity you may have little truck – and the Sheep for spirituality – which may be too airy-fairy for you to be comfortable with. Both will tend to demand your agreement this year.

What’s the solution? The Dragon. When the Ox, Sheep and Dog come together, they may hatch grand plans but they often lack the magic to bring them into reality. The Dragon is that magic. You may find it in yourself although you are very likely temperamentally unsuited to allowing an answer to emerge without fully understanding how it was arrived at. That Dragon quality can be tapped at SE1 (ESE) and during April of course and between 7 and 9 am every morning. It’s a kind of forgiveness. A letting go that allows magic through. Trust yourself, question everything and be alert for the presence of the Dragon.

All of the above sounds pretty testing but 2015 need not be. The Bullying Punishment arises most commonly as a great and positive breakthrough looms. This year your big project may call you and it may require tremendous preparation. Three of the four ducks required may be in a row and then one may fall. The Dragon is the fourth duck. The reason that the punishment is so common and so notorious is that so often, given the choice between big and challenging success and distractions like sickness and accidents, we falter and fall. The choice to rise, however it shows up, is the Dragon.

So a year of drama and tension but also of big opportunity. The question is whether you believe in magic, isn’t it?

Health: breathe more deeply to stay present in moments of pressure.

Money: you might acquire assets this year.

Relationship: better for female heterosexuals and gay males. More friendship than lust.

Feng Shui: South not much use. Seek NE3 (ENE); occupy, activate face.

Readers’ Digest Version: seek the magic embodied in the Dragon.

Richard Ashworth©, early in the month of the Tiger, 2015.