Trecena 14 opens on 1 Itzcuintli, the dog, under the patronage of Xipe Totec, our flayed lord, god of spring and agricultural renewal, whose great festival, Tlacaxipehualiztli, saw priests don the flayed skins of sacrificial captives, an act the sources present as a deliberate symbol of the earth itself shedding its old covering and putting on new vegetation with the season's turn. Sahagun's informants promised this week's children wealth generously spent, feasts given and hospitality returned, a favourable augury for generosity and for those who feed others, a reading that connects naturally to Xipe Totec's own festival, at which the flayed skin's wearer received gifts and hospitality from the community during the days the rite continued.
Xipe Totec is also remembered as patron of goldsmiths, whose craft of working a base material into something precious echoed, for Mexica thought, the same renewal his flaying rite enacted on a human scale, an association the dog week's generosity theme sits comfortably beside, since both goldsmithing and open handed feasting turn raw material or private wealth into something given outward for others' benefit. The dog sign itself carries, in its own patronage under Mictlantecuhtli in the twenty day sign count, a guiding role for the dead, a different and darker register from its use here as merely the trecena's opening day.