The dog belongs to the san he triad with the Tiger and the Horse and stands opposite the Dragon, and the traditional reading treats it as the guardian of the cycle, the sign that watches over what the others have built. Dog figures appear in Chinese guardian imagery, though the stone lions at temple and official gateways, often called foo dogs in English, are lions rather than dogs and the English name is a misunderstanding. In popular almanac practice the dog year is read as a year for consolidation, fair dealing and the settling of obligations. As with the other eleven, the practical use of the sign is through the branch: its earth phase, its position in the twelve, its harmonies and clashes, and its combination with the heavenly stem to place the year within the sixty-term cycle.
The tiangou, celestial dog, eclipse-devouring myth documented under the sign's paired entry has a close structural parallel, independently arrived at, in the Norse myth of the wolves Skoll and Hati chasing the sun and moon, and in several unrelated cultures' practice of making noise during a solar or lunar eclipse to frighten off the devouring creature, a striking case of similar folk explanations for the same startling astronomical event arising in societies with no contact with one another.