2018 Chinese Zodiac: Year of the Earth Dog
2018 is the year of the Yang Earth Dog. The Earth Dog year runs from February 16th, 2018 to February 4, 2019. If you were born in 2018 on or after February 16, your Chinese zodiac sign is the Dog and your element is Earth. Born earlier in January? You belong to the year before.
Born in January or early February 2018? Read this first
The Chinese zodiac year does not start on 1 January. The Earth Dog year begins on February 16th, 2018. That one date changes the answer for everyone born in the weeks before it.
You were born before the new year turned, so you belong to 2017's sign — not 2018's.
Read the 2017 page instead →The rest of this page is yours. Everything below describes the Yang Earth Dog.
This is the single most common mistake in Chinese astrology, and it is why two people born weeks apart in the same calendar year can have completely different signs.
What a Earth Dog actually is
A Earth Dog is someone born in a Dog year that also carries the Earth element. In Chinese astrology your animal is your zodiac sign (it shapes who you are), and the element is the "energy flavour" running through it that year. So a Earth Dog blends the Dog's nature with Earth's energy of stability, nourishment and loyalty — a more specific portrait than the Dog alone.
Earth in plain terms. Earth is the energy of late summer — the steady centre that everything returns to. It adds patience, reliability and a deep instinct to care for the people around them.
They are the dependable anchor others build their lives around.
Too much Earth becomes worry, over-giving or difficulty letting go.
Dog strengths and blind spots
Where you are strong. Dogs are the zodiac's truest friends and fiercest defenders of the people and values they love. They have strong moral instincts, stand up for underdogs, and keep their word under pressure.
Where it costs you. Dogs can be anxious, overly critical, and slow to trust strangers. Their protective instinct sometimes reads as suspicion or pessimism.
Work that suits a Earth Dog
Lawyer, judge, doctor, social worker, counselor, activist, teacher, soldier.
Read that as a description of the conditions you do your best work in, not a list you have to pick from. Earth shapes how you work as much as the Dog shapes what you are drawn to.
Who the Dog gets on with
In the classical system the twelve animals fall into groups that support each other and pairs that grind. For the Dog, the natural allies are Tiger, Horse and Rabbit, and the hardest work tends to be with Dragon, Rooster and Goat.
Lucky colours, numbers and hours for the Earth Dog
These belong to the Dog as a sign, which means they are shared by everyone born in a Dog year. A colour chosen for you works differently: it is picked to feed whichever of the five elements your own chart is short of, and two Dogs can need opposite colours for that reason.
Other Earth Dog years
The animal cycles every 12 years and the element every 10, so the exact pairing Earth Dog only comes round once every 60 years. Anyone born in these years shares your sign exactly:
Your birth year is one pillar out of four
Everything above is true of you — and equally true of everyone else born in 2018. Millions of people share the Earth Dog sign.
What separates your chart from theirs is the month, day and hour you were born. Those three add three more pillars to the one on this page. Together they decide whether your core element — the character at the centre of your chart, traditionally called your Day Master — is supported or drained, which of the five elements you are carrying too much of, which one is missing, and which ten-year cycle you are standing in right now.
That is the part a page about 2018 cannot know. It needs your birth time.
See your full chart, not just your year
Free, and it takes a birth date. Your Energy Chart reads all four pillars and shows the element balance behind them.
or browse every zodiac year →