In Scotland, as late as the 18th century, men would send their dogs away on New Year’s morning, caste them out, if you will, by throwing bread and sweetmeats, and shouting: “Get away you dog! Whatever death of men, or loss of cattle, would happen in this house to the end of the present year, may it all light on your head!”
I can’t explain why I like knowing this, except that the experienced dog-in-mind, the canine equivalent of facts, leads inevitably to some questions. How far would a Scotsman have to throw his bread to drive a dog away for a year? Would he have to use a contrivance, a catapult? What sorcery would then disguise his house, and thereby prevent the dog from coming home? Perhaps all superstitious Scotsmen lived in castles with moats and drawbridges? Maybe all the dogs of the common folk were the abandoned dogs of the rich? Or better yet, one pictures the dogs standing outside the pediments, howling–for another superstition held that howling dogs portend death or other calamities.
Better a dog by the fire.
Planet of the Blind 