Dog: Best Friend for a Lifetime

2018 is the Year of the Dog in China. Now let’s get to know some Doggie cultures. Dogs are often called “man’s best friend”. This sums up the attitude towards dogs that many people around the world share. It means that dogs are loyal, and will stay with their owners through thick and thin. Although they are seen as companions and part of the family today, China and Western countries have different cultural beliefs about dogs. In Chinese, some words concerning dogs are negative, such as “No ivory can come out of a dog’s mouth”. But in English, it is quite different. People use “Every dog has his day” to describe a period of good fortune and “work like a dog” to describe a hard worker. The dog-human relationship goes right back to the beginnings of Western civilization. Perhaps the most moving example is from the 8th century BC, in Greek poet Homer’s The Odyssey. When Greek hero Odysseus finally returns home after 20 years away at war, no one recognizes him except his dog Argos. Argos is an old, sick dog, and is about to die, but he is overjoyed to see his master again after so many years. In later centuries, the friendship between humans and dogs was a common subject for artists. For example, Dutch artist Breughel’s painting The Hunters in the Snow describes several hunting dogs following the hunters as they return from the hunt to their snow-covered farmhouse. Dogs are loyal in a way that friends sometimes aren’t. As the US musician Don Van Vliet once said, “You can tell by the kindness of a dog how a human should be.”