Happy Year of the Dog!

Happy year of the Earth Dog!  Today marks the beginning of Lunar Year 4715 in the Chinese calendar.  Where did the time go? We have finally worked our way past all of the fire roosters and metal horses to the familiar dog—an exceedingly great animal! According to augury, the coming year will be a very good year, particularly vis a vis financial matters…however, the year will also be enervating and could feature health problems related to stress, exhaustion, and strife (it looks like the augurs have at least been reading the frontpage headlines).

The same Earth element which provides the success of the Earth Dog year will also mean there will be stretches of extreme dullness.  Once again it seems like the oracles can see right into my actual life! Who writes this stuff? Finally, the site I looked at says “postponing and procrastinating are words you will need to remove from your vocabulary during this year.”  Sadly, my vocabulary is very extensive and I am not about to forget THOSE words.  However even for tempestuous & disorganized tigers, the dog year will be a year when projects come to fruition.  The dog year is the eleventh year in the 12 year cycle so it is the beginning of a cycle of rebirth.  We can look forward to that as well…and to some dumplings and fireworks!

Thanks to my exigent schedule, I can’t really have a dog in New York, but I love them.  Dogs are the first domesticated animal by tens of thousands of years (or maybe much more).  In their wild form, dogs are known as “wolves” and they are one of the apex predators of the Holocene. Wolves and humans are one of the all-time great pairings like Laurel and Hardy, peanut butter and jelly, or water and sodium—two super aggressive hierarchical social predators who just innately get each other (wait, what was Laurel and Hardy about again?). I have been meaning to write about dogs since they are dear to me (and since the converging stories of our two species explains things about living beings). I will do so next week to celebrate the Year of the Dog. For now though  “Gǒu nián dà jí” – Lots of luck for this year of the dog!

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