The Dog is card number 18 of the Petit Lenormand, the thirty-six card deck read in the nineteenth-century French cartomantic tradition that took its name, after her death in 1843, from the Parisian fortune-teller Marie Anne Lenormand.
Image, meaning and playing card
The card shows a dog. In the tradition its core sense is loyalty, friendship and trust; a faithful companion or a dependable friend near the querent.
Like every card in the deck it also carries an inset playing card, here the 10 of Hearts, a survival of the ordinary piquet pack over which the pictorial Lenormand was laid. Lenormand cards are read less as standing symbols than in combination, each modifying the cards to either side, so that the dog takes much of its final meaning from its neighbours in the line or the Grand Tableau.
In the original German tradition the card is Der Hund. As House 18 in the Grand Tableau, any card landing in that numbered position is read as touching on friendship, loyalty and trustworthy people generally. In combination, Dog followed by Man or Woman reads as a loyal friend or trustworthy person, while Dog preceding Snake reads as a friend who is not what they seem or whose loyalty is in doubt, a pairing readers treat with particular caution since it directly contradicts the Dog's own usually straightforward, favourable sense.