August Horoscope by Mariya Kurbatova

Readers of dogyard, one thing we hold deeply to our core here is our whimsy. We believe in the ability to share great writing, build a community of people dedicated to fighting for literary and societal rights, and to have a space available to take the edge off of life. This world will take your joy, I beg you to not allow it. Mariya Kurbatova, our Fiction editor and lovely astrologer, brings forward her reading on the month of August. This Horoscope is well researched, fun, and maybe one of my favorite things I get to share with you. This will be detailed as a Curio, or something fun and rare that you might not get elsewhere. If Horoscope isn't your thing, maybe the next Curio strikes your fancy. Either way, we're just little dogs chasing what makes us happy and I hope you find something fun to cherish here in our yard. Want more of Mariya? Read her intro interview here. 

We are grateful for the reception so far and would like to invite you to continue submitting your fiction, nonfiction, poetry, essay, and visual art/graphic narrative! Make sure to check out our submissions page and all of dogyard mag's other content! Follow us on Bluesky and Instagram to keep in touch!

August in Arkansas. Every day is dangerous. Yesterday, heat warning. Today, hours of rain, flood advisory. The roads are stuffed with cars, their exhaust bitter in our throats, because you can’t bike or walk far without feeling faint, and anyway, most sidewalks stop in the least convenient place. The stores’ icy AC breathes goosebumps onto sun-scorched skin. The chlorine pools and forest creeks we beg relief in have themselves warmed to match the air. Nature can’t find her balance. Our bodies can’t calibrate. 

The Dog Days are here. 

I read the Dog Days Wikipedia page. More things than you can imagine are rooted in astrology.

These summer months are when Sirius, the dog star, first appears on the horizon. In Hellenistic astrology, he’s connected to “heat, drought, sudden thunderstorms, lethargy, fever, mad dogs, and bad luck.” It’s fitting; in our northern hemisphere, his walk across the sky announces the stickiest, slowest, hottest bits of the year.

Horoscopes this month are guided by Sirius. Let’s see what our celestial pup digs up for your sign.

Aries

Summer reminds me of the Diary of a Wimpy Kid movies of my youth, about the hapless young sociopath Greg, his doting & naive bestie Rowley, their middle school hijinks. I think especially of the third film Dog Days and its summertime settings: public pool, tennis court, messy camping trip. 

The movies were based on a beloved, incredibly-long-running kids’ book series. When the film adaptations first arrived, even as a child I could acknowledge the casting director’s impeccable eye. The books’ illustrations are a step below cartoons — essentially stick figures. Yet the actors animating these characters were somehow ideal choices. Movie Greg reminded me of every unsuccessful sixth-grade class clown I knew. Rowley was perfectly soft, smiley, awkward, bowl-cutted. Toddler brother Manny, if I remember correctly, was portrayed by two toothy twins taking turns on-camera. Rodrick, Greg’s older bully brother and wannabe rockstar, remains the internet’s persistent crush thanks to actor Devon Bostick’s performance. 

But Dog Days’ successor sucked. Apparently. I haven’t seen it. The fourth film, The Long Haul, had been crucified on the meme cross for its casting overhaul. Especially ridiculed was the swap of Bostick for Charlie Wright in Rodrick’s role. Gone was our dreamy, sullen, messy-haired and droopy-eyed archetypal bad-boy-big-brother. Replacing him was some goofy man with a fucked-up bob cut. (Remember #NotMyRodrick ?)

What happened? Time passed. Kid actors got old. Adult actors signed on to other projects. Every role got recast, resulting in an impostor film, a simulacrum of the Wimpy Kid universe, with neither the heart nor aesthetic of the original trilogy. 

Within you, dear Aries, live fond memories. Perhaps past summers, childhood friends, first lovers, family times. It’s lovely to live within these memories; it’s dangerous to keep recasting them in your reality. This month, inspect what characters from your youth have superimposed themselves into present-day actors, people you know now. And then, let them go. 

Taurus

Dog Days beg us to slow down, hide in lakes and under trees, nap through the sizzling afternoons. The superstitious ancients knew this, heeding Sirius’s call to pause their bustle. But now the lakes are poisoned; the trees are razed; work work work demands we stay alert and awake through our sleepiest hours. 

This month, ask: what’s truly urgent these days? What truly requires you to keep pace, to pant, to sweat it out and march through heat? And what can you set aside for less oppressive times?

Gemini

“Dog Day Afternoon” is a 1975 film starring Al Pacino about a bank robbery/hostage situation gone awry. Its IMDB trivia page tells us, Pacino initially agreed to star, then reneged. He’d just finished filming “The Godfather Part II” and was tired. As a practitioner of method acting, he “didn't relish the thought of working himself up to a state of near hysteria every day.” But when he learned the script would be passed on instead to Dustin Hoffman, his rival, Pacino pulled himself together. He went back again. 

I’ll admit: I can’t always tell Hoffman & Pacino apart. I forgot they were two people, much less actors in the same field at the same time. I didn’t know their rivalry was so intense. But, trusted source Yahoo! News says they “couldn't do much in the 1970s without being compared to one another.” Producer Alexander H. Cohen even suggested they settle scores the old-fashioned way: a boxing match. 

The fight never transpired. But from “Dog Day Afternoon,” perhaps you still can learn the lesson of competition. This month, ask who is your biggest rival? Do you have different rivals in different areas of life? What do rivals have, or seem to have, that you don’t? Jealousy and competition need not be negative influences, if you understand them at the root. Use your rivalries, real or imagined, as North Stars to navigate your own growth.

Cancer

Something I learned in my Dog Day research: this July-August portion of the year is slow for the stock market. According to StoneX,  “Historically, August has been a weak month for US stocks, with the broad S&P 500 index sporting an average (price-only) return of -0.6% over the last 35 years, the second-worst performance of any month.” August’s also “the month where stock market volatility rises the most.” So stock traders call these months the dog days, too. 

Sceptics of astrology often say something like, “Do you really think Jupiter has any bearing on your life? Do you really think the month you’re born in influences your personality?” To engage with myth in a (supposedly) rational world often feels silly. Yet, the movement of (often fictitious) capital drives much of our daily actions. 

Karl Marx wrote: “All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify.”

“All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind.” 

Movements of the market, even in these slowed Dog Days, insist on constant change, new stories, new myths to create new needs. It’s hard to not be swayed. Often, it’s impossible if one is to survive. But, one must remain conscious, vigilant, and critical. This month, take a closer look at the larger forces pushing you through life. What larger myths do you subscribe to? How do they influence your decisions?

Leo

In “Sirius: Brightest Diamond in the Night Sky,” Jay B. Holberg writes of the “elaborate lore” ancient Greeks possessed surrounding Sirius, the dog star. Holberg writes, “in the Greek mind the star was… associated with heat, fire, and even fevers. There was also a strong association with dogs, and in some instances with the ominous presence of doom.” 

So it seems even the ancient Greeks knew of Summertime Sadness. There is a particular melancholy brought by the dog days: being blue in months associated by advertising with pool parties, teeny bikinis, beachtime beers, and general revelry is a specific kind of alienation. But there is much to be sad about in the world, and sometimes, rises and falls in temperature do little to alleviate it. 

This month, tune in to your true emotions. Allow them to truly root inside your body. Feel them in your toes, fingers, eyes, neck. Cry if you need. Laugh if that feels true. This is a time of emotional rejuvenation, a somatic clean-up. Let everything, that which feels good and that which feels bad, pass through in waves, and begin anew in fall. 

Virgo

There’s of course no scientifically proven connection between Sirius the dog star and our summer heat. Wikipedia says that though Sirius is the brightest proper star, it’s 8.7 light years away from us and thus “has no effect whatsoever on the planet's weather or temperature.”

Science is one way to grasp the world. I mean, sure: the sun is just a burning ball of gas. Venus is an acidic wasteland. Rainbows are refracted water. Puppies are carbon in motion. Love is neurochemicals frying the brain. Our world purports to be rational, and you, dear Virgo, perhaps consider yourself rational, too. 

But think of those times when logic led you to wrong conclusions. When your information wasn’t quite correct. When reasoning through something left you even more confused. This month, consider which areas of your life deserve cold, clinical, and analytic thought, and which ones are best left to feeling, intuition, and emotion.

Libra

One of my favorite pastimes is browsing the comment sections under decade-old YouTube music videos. Two main types of comments prevail: “Who’s still watching this in 2025?” and heartfelt confessions of personal trials, tribulations, and victories. 

British band Florence + The Machine has particularly vulnerable fans, it seems. Take the top comments under their 2010 hit Dog Days Are Over: “Today marks one year of me being free from self harm, I’m proud of myself.” “This song was played at my brother's funeral. Everytime i listen to it, it makes me emotional.” “today marks the beginning of me overcoming my anxiety.” I’m used to an irony-poisoned internet, where even confessions are cloaked in stilted meta-awareness. There’s something touching about these comments’ direct delivery. 

This month, when the Dog Days roll around, when things get hard, consider just confronting that. Just tell someone, anyone, as clearly & directly as you can. What happens when you sit in honest emotion, not hiding anything, not molding your feelings to be palatable or undetectable to others? 

Scorpio

I often think about the stories ancient peoples used to explain their world. Myth was their way of grasping reality. Take the old Greek’s thoughts on dog days: they saw dogs pant from heat, and thought Sirius, the summer’s rising star, had an especially damaging effect on dogs. Greeks saw dogs’ mouths agape, their breath shallow, their tongues lolling, and thought Sirius too must have a seething, shaking nature. 

We might laugh at these old ways of understanding the world. We know now that dogs pant to cool themselves off, not because an incredibly far-off star appears in the night sky. But we too still tell ourselves stories about our lives, the people and animals in it. We are pattern-seeking, plot-craving, meaning-making creatures. There’s nothing wrong with that.  But it’s an important quirk of our psychology to be aware of. 

This month, reflect on the stories you’ve been told about the world and the way it works. What are these stories based on? Where do you fit in? Who tells these stories, and why? Do you believe them, or do you want to seek new meanings? 

Sagittarius 

Sirius is bright. Brightest star we see, save for the sun. For the ancients, his glow, and the regularity of his ascent, was life-saving. Ancient Egyptians charted the Nile’s flooding based on his return. Ancient Polynesians used him for navigation, for latitude markers. 

Bright-burning things tug others along. The sun summons sunflowers to turn their heavy heads. Porchlights beckon moths to death. The moon makes wolves sing. The stars move ships and farmers. 

You, dear Sagittarius, shine. Others notice this too. This month, you’ll be called to what feel like selfish endeavors. Your toes will dip in hedonism, self-serving pleasure. Allow yourself to relax into it. Your glow will shine light onto others. Your overflowing cup will water their parched soils. 

Capricorn

“Sirius: Brightest Diamond in the Night Sky” is a book by Jay B. Holberg, all about the dog star. Holberg writes that Sirius is Tsien Lang in China — the Heavenly Wolf. This similarity is intriguing to Holberg, for the moon and stars have long associations with wolves and dogs in the West. Is this coincidence? Or “an indication of a very old tradition that spans the Eurasian continent?” 

This month, keep your eye out for synchronicities, those little alignments that feel like fate. Small signs are encoded in your day-to-day moves. Those small coincidences that seem to mean so much, they will guide you to your next move. Follow the deja vu and the improbability. 

Aquarius

Dog Days in Swedish & Finnish are called “rot month” (rötmånaden and mätäkuu). Wikipedia says, it’s because foods spoil easier in the heat. Wounds infect faster, ooze pus. 

Rot is life’s underbelly, its attached stinky shadow. All life will rot. It’s only a question of time. And that, in turn, is a question of care. Do you remember to refrigerate your freckled fruit, or forget it on the countertop to the flies and afternoon sun? Do you treat and bandage cuts, or wave a dismissive hand, accept infection’s course? 

This month, consider what you care for. Take stock: what things will you continue to prune and heat and chill and mend, continue to keep alive? What’s already dead in your life? Throw the rot into your compost; only its full breakdown can beget new life. 

Pisces

Sirius is the dog star because he lives in Canis Major, the greater dog constellation. In myth, Canis Major sometimes represents Laelaps, a hound gifted by Zeus to his lover Europa. 

Laelaps always caught what he hunted. The Teumessian Fox always eluded his hunter. Cephalus, son of Hermes, sicced Laelaps upon the fox. Thus, a paradox: one never misses a catch, one never gets caught. Who wins? 

Zeus, noting this impossibility, turned both to stone then cast them to the sky, damning them to be constellations, their race forever unsettled. 

Just like this ancient hunt, your month will be full of paradoxes. Bits of life will clash. Two impossible things occur at once. Contradictions abound. Let them. The absurdity might be tense, uncomfortable, confusing. But these things resolve themselves.