The horoscope of my Sagittarian dog

In the 1990s I remember talking to an editor at Penguin about writing popular non-fiction. He told me to imagine that I was writing for a ten-year old. He also gave me examples of books that had done well. He pointed to one book about choosing lottery numbers, and another on estimating your dog’s IQ. Although I had a degree in psychology, there’s no way I could have estimated any dog’s intelligence. I didn’t even like dogs, regardless of their star sign – Virgo dogs, Scorpio dogs, Sagittarian dogs, they were all the same to me and of no interest. But I do understand that dogs are a popular subject, and that if you can give dogowners an insight into their pet’s psychology they might pay you handsomely.

It’s then not surprising that there are pet psychics making an excellent living. I suppose they can directly communicate with the pet’s soul, and also read their aura. Spot wants a change of scene, wants to be closer to trees and water… and perhaps snow, because in his last incarnation bar one he was on the sledge team that took Amundsen to the South Pole. Easy money, if you can spin the words.

We then move on to horoscopes. If you can do the chart of a human, you can do the chart of a dog. However there are some complicatons. Many dogs are rescues, where the birth time is unknown. Even if you know what date the dog was born, the breeder may not know the birth time. And then there’s the problem of litter size. Loads of puppies are going to be born at roughly the same time, with similar horoscopes. It’s like with humans, except worse. Babies are born at the same time and the same place, and they often grow up to have very different personalities and destinies. The puppies of the same purebred litter can go in many directions. A Crufts champion, a family pet, a prisoner in a cage.

As far as my dog is concerned, I know that she was born on December 13 2008 in the Slovak Republic. I don’t know what time she was born. As I result, I don’t have her Ascendant or even her Moon sign. At midday the Moon was in Cancer, but if she was born in the early morning it would have been in Gemini.

The dog’s name is Čuvi. Note the accent on the C – the name is pronounced something like “Choovi”. She is a Slovenksy Čuvac, a breed of mountain dog that in terms of temperment and looks is similar to a Great Pyrhenees. I wrote about her nine years ago, when she was not much more than a year old. Now she’s ten, and entering her golden years. Here’s the chart:

As you can see Čuvi has her Sun in Sagittarius, conjunct Mars. On the face of it, this is perfect for a dog. Bouncy and tactless, and ready to bolt at the slightest opportunity. This Sagittarian nature wasn’t restrained by surgical alteration, in the sense that she wasn’t spayed. I remember during her first heat, she ran through two sets of doors, out onto a busy intersection. I chased her in my socks, and had to run through cars and tram tracks in a desperate attempt to get hold of her.

However, the Sun is square Saturn in Virgo. This aspect, shared by Stalin, makes Čuvi more serious, and takes away some of her Sagittarian light-heartedness. My mother-in-law, who knows a lot more about dogs than me, remarked that Čuvi doesn’t have a sense of humour and isn’t playful. This may be a trait of the breed, but Čuvi certainly seems to have a serious view of the world. She is always on her guard and hates playing games.

The Sun-Saturn aspect might have a psychological dimension. Čuvi has always had food issues, and this might be because she was the runt of the litter, and always in competition with old and stronger dogs. She has to be pretty hungry to eat regular dog food, and she has never been overweight.

Now it may be that the Sun-Saturn aspect could have manifested differently for the other members of the litter – I think it was a litter of five. There could have been constraints on their freedom, though I think it unlikely that any of them were caged. This is a serious point. In Eastern Slovakia it is common to keep your dog in a six by six cage, all day long. The idea being that the dog is contained, but is also able to warn off intruders.

Yet the Sun may not be the most important point in a dog’s chart. It may be the Moon. After all, the Moon is the natural ruler of dogs. We don’t know what sign Čuvi’s Moon is in, though she was born shortly after a Full Moon. Her Moon is probably opposition Pluto, and this supports the idea that she has an obsessive streak when it comes to food.

On the other hand, it could be argued that dogs should only be seen in terms of their relationship to their owners. This is not a view that I subscribe to – I like PETA’s opinion, that dogs are companions not pets. Nonetheless, there are two points in my chart that should be considered. I have Mercury at 19 degrees 53 minutes Gemini, and the North Node at 11 degrees 6 minutes Leo,

My Mercury is therefore opposite Čuvi’s Sun, and square her Saturn and Uranus. This means that her Sun-Saturn-Uranus T-Square is damaging my Mercury. Well, Mercury rules the lungs, and I suffer from mild asthma. Half an hour after buying Čuvi, when we were driving home with her in the back, I felt my lungs tightening. I was indeed completely allergic to her, and when she was around me I had to take steroid inhalers. It got to the stage where I tried wearing surgical masks, though this didn’t work. I had to suffer for 18 months, until my immune system finally kicked in. Though I should point out that a Slovenksy Čuvac is as bad as it gets when it comes to allergies. The breed has a thick white coat, full of dander, and it’s a major shedder.

The North Node is perhaps of a cosmic nature. Čuvi’s North Node is at 11 degrees 57 minutes Aquarius, meaning my North Node is conjunct her South Node. Was she my dog in a previous incarnation? Or is there just some fated connection between us?

We now move to forecasts. If you can forecast for a human, you should be able to forecast for an animal. Though it does help to have the time of birth. You will notice from Čuvi’s chart that in 2017 she had Saturn making a conjunction with her Sun. Around August 26 2017 Saturn went stationary direct at 21 degrees 11 minutes Sagittarius and over the next month made exact aspects to her Sun-Saturn square.

It was indeed a difficult time for Čuvi. Firstly I was away in England for the whole summer, meaning that she didn’t get regular walks. Secondly, and most seriously, my wife made the reckless decision to buy three guinea pigs. In fact, she bought six guinea pigs, because one of the guinea pigs was pregnant. Straight away Čuvi’s freedom of manoeuvre was restricted – there were rooms in the house she could no longer enter. At times the guinea pigs drove her crazy, and in one fit of running and barking she sprained her hip, and for the next few weeks was limping. This is a classic Sun in Sagittarius injury. Sagittarius rules the hips, and Saturn causes the damage.

Fast forward a year. September 12 2018. Čuvi had her teeth cleaned. I told the vet to check her nipples, because there seemed to be a lump on one of them. The vet told me that there was nothing to worry about. A few months pass. The lump gets bigger, and there is something to worry about. On January 15 2019 Čuvi has surgery. Here’s the approximate chart for the operation:

I didn’t choose the timing – given that Čuvi probably had cancer, I had to take the first appointment that was available. The chart of the operation has the Moon in Taurus, moving to a trine with Mercury. For an operation chart, the Moon should not be in a sign connected with the location of the sickness, and this was certainly the case – Taurus is connected with the throat and the neck, not the breast. In terms of identifying Čuvi in the chart, I would take her as being Venus in Sagittarius. Venus is ruler of the Sixth House, and traditionally this house is linked with smaller animals, such as dogs. If Čuvi had been a horse or a whale, she would have been covered by the Twelfth House.

The vet is Jupiter, ruler of the Seventh, in its own sign of Sagittarius. The vet is therefore well placed, and knows what he is doing. Furthermore, Venus is moving to a conjunction with Jupiter. This is fortunate. On the down side, Mars is making a square to Saturn – an aspect that Čuvi has in her own chart. Very often, when a pattern in one’s own chart is repeated in the sky, one feels the effects, even if there are no transiting aspects.

The operation went smoothly, and everything was taken out. A few days later we got the biopsy results, and it was early stage cancer. However, the vet was optimistic that the cancer hadn’t spread. The story goes to show that dogs, like humans, need to be checked for suspicious lumps at regular intervals. And I’m hoping that the Venus-Jupiter conjunction at the time of the operation will be enough to protect Čuvi from going under the knife again.

My overall message, as an astrologer, is that you can do your dog’s horoscope. You might also be able to pinpoint periods of a dog’s life when they might be under stress or even in danger. And maybe, if you’re commercially minded, you can even charge money to do a dog’s horoscope. Good luck with that, but make sure you’re ethical about it.