戌
Year of the Dog
xū · 11 of 12 · the hours of 19:00 – 21:00
Loyal to people rather than to positions.
Years of the dog
1934 · 1946 · 1958 · 1970 · 1982 · 1994 · 2006 · 2018 · 2030
Each one begins at that year's new year, not on 1 January — so a January birthday in one of these years belongs to the animal before.
The dog is the moral sign of the twelve: loyal, fair-minded, and quick to defend someone treated badly. The tradition trusts it more than any of the others and likes it most.
Its cost is anxiety. A dog carries other people's situations around, expects the worst in order to be ready for it, and can be slow to trust anyone who has once behaved badly — a memory that protects and also isolates.
In Japan the same branch is read inu. The twelve are the eto there, and they still name the hours, the directions and the years.
Which animal you actually are depends on the day you were born rather than the year on the certificate — work it out exactly, free, from the real lunisolar boundary.