I love the phrase ‘the dog days of summer’, even without knowing what it means. It captures the feeling of a close, hot, humid atmosphere, like being hugged by a great, damp, invisible dog. And the way heat makes moribund sloths out of us and our pets. We are as sleepy as old Basset Hounds, our brains shrivelling like raisins.
This week my summer brain dragged itself to Wikipedia and its thicket of references to learn the truth. You will be astounded to learn I was wrong on all counts. The name for the hottest part of summer comes not from lethargic pooches, but from the brightest star in the night sky: Sirius, the dog star, the constellation running after Orion the Hunter.
New Zealand Geographic once called Sirius and its surrounding constellations ‘The Barbecue Stars’, because they make such fine viewing in the dusk of a summer sky.
In the Northern hemisphere, the ‘dog days’ are in July and August, following the ‘heliacal rising’ of the star system Sirius, a star bright enough to heat the planet Earth (or so it was thought).
In the Southern Hemisphere, the ‘dog days’ of summer is a misnomer. As the rising of Sirius in the morning sky spelled summer in ancient Greece, it meant winter for Māori. In te reo, the name for Sirius is Takurua, another word for winter.
This would have come as a shock to ancient Mediterranean beard-strokers. The first record we have of Sirius’s name, which means ‘scorching’, dates to the 7th century BC.
As ancient peoples saw this star close to the sun in the hottest part of the year, they blamed it for the worst of high summer: for drought, hot tempers, thunderstorms, fever, and bad luck. And mad dogs and dog bites, being a dog star.
In a fascinating contrast to the way we think today, the classical world often seemed to dread summer. If you worked outdoors and your family depended on the crops you grew, a drought was a disaster made worse by disease (which we now know was not spread by Sirius, but by heat-loving vectors like bacteria and mosquitos). ‘Mad dogs’ might sound funny to us now, but it was surely a reference to rabies, a fearsome disease which plagued the classical world in summer.
Like the Greeks, Romans thought the star caused the Earth to overheat. The Roman poet Virgil described vintners’ struggles while “the Dog-star cleaves the thirsty ground”.
In the 19th century it was discovered, with doggy appropriateness, that Sirius is a double star, with a little white dwarf buddy – hard to see next to such a glowing show-off.
Even the ancient Scandinavians had no love for the ‘dog days’ – in Swedish they are known as ‘rötmånaden’, and Finnish ‘mätäkuu’, meaning ‘rot month’; a visceral reference to food spoiling and the difficulty of controlling wound infection in the heat. On Waiheke, the phrase ‘dog days’ still seems apt. An old-timer once told me that Waiheke has become ‘a very doggy island’, and popular beaches before 10am (where dogs are allowed ‘under control off a leash’) reflect that. The island’s pooches seem less ‘mad’ at this time of year than deliriously happy, especially when confronted with a beach where they can collect sticks and offer them to passersby, and throw themselves into the surf like blissed-out galoots.
Last Sunday morning I walked the new path along the edge of Te Huruhi Bay to Surfdale Beach and back, a treat for humans and canines alike. I counted 50 walkers and cyclists and 12 dogs. Counting the two of us, that’s 64 track users in barely an hour. As far as a safe, flat new track goes, this counts as a hit. It is a great place to walk a dog which doesn’t bring them into contact with vulnerable shore birds.
A decent boardwalk along the Strand in Onetangi, where there is currently no allowance for pedestrians, would also give birds like the oystercatcher/Tōrea pango a reprieve from walkers and dogs, improving the safety of all of these critters in one stroke.
Another dog friendly move would be to increase the number of island poop bag dispensers, although, in the words of a recent Spinoff headline, ‘If you love a dog, you must also love disposing of its shit.’
“If a dog poos outdoors in Tokyo,” wrote Anna Rawhiti-Connell in the piece, “owners are expected to carry it home and flush it down the toilet. Driving home? Buy a magnetised dog poo bag so it can be stuck to the outside of your car.”
A reminder, for the tiny minority of dog owners who seem to need it: it is against the law not to clean up after your dog in a public place. The dangerous bugs who like living in dog excrement include MRSA (Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus), Enterococci, E. coli, Salmonella, roundworm and Giardia. Dog poo left outdoors gets on our feet, and poisons waterways and animals including dogs.
In our ‘dog days of summer’, when everyone plays ball, we can all be as happy as a puppy on a beach. And that’s a lot of happy.
• Jenny Nicholls
