Dogs across Nepal are getting flower garlands and a red mark on the forehead today, Sunday, November 8, because it is Kukur Tihar, a day set aside in the Hindu calendar for worshipping them.
Kukur means dog in Nepali. Tihar is the five-day festival of lights around it, and the national tourism authority gives the reason plainly: the second day is “for worshipping the dogs as the agents of Yama,” the god of death. Crows, his informants, get the day before.
What actually happens
The ritual is short and physical. People press a red vermilion tika onto a dog’s forehead and the tops of its paws, drape marigolds around its neck, and put down a meal, often meat, milk or eggs. Pets get this. So do street dogs. Some worshippers fast until they have fed a dog.
Nepal’s police and army also hold ceremonies for their working dogs on the day, according to the festival’s encyclopedia entry.
This year’s calendar is unusual
The tourism authority describes dogs on day two and Laxmi Puja, the goddess of wealth’s night, on day three. In 2026 the moon compresses that. The Nepali calendar for Kartik 2083 puts Kukur Tihar and Laxmi Puja on the same date, so the dogs’ day and the goddess’s night share one date, closing with rows of lamps along windows and doors. The schedule, converted for readers abroad:
- Saturday, November 7: Kaag Tihar, for crows
- Sunday, November 8: Kukur Tihar, for dogs, and Laxmi Puja
- Monday, November 9: Gai Puja, for cows
- Tuesday, November 10: Goru Puja, for oxen, and Mha Puja, which opens Nepal Sambat year 1147
- Wednesday, November 11: Bhai Tika, when sisters bless brothers
Nepal’s embassies in London and Brasilia have posted November 10 and 11 as their Tihar closures, which lines up with that sequence.
The dog who tested a king
The usual origin story comes from the Mahabharata. Yudhishthira, eldest of the five Pandava brothers, walks toward heaven with a stray dog at his heels. Everyone else in his party falls along the way. At the end of the road, the god Indra tells him the dog must stay behind, and Yudhishthira refuses to go in without it. The dog then reveals itself as Yama in disguise, and the test is over.
The link to the tourism authority’s explanation is direct: honor the dog, and you are honoring the messenger of the god who will one day judge you.
One day out of 365
Not everyone finds the day sufficient. In 2016 the president of the group Animal Nepal urged owners to look after dogs all year, to unchain them and walk them, according to a newspaper report cited in the festival’s encyclopedia entry.
The custom has also traveled. A Kukur Tihar USA event began in Haymarket, Virginia, on October 27, 2024, with organizers fixing it to the last Sunday of October. Its second edition followed on October 26, 2025. In Nepal, the next dog day after this one arrives with next autumn’s Tihar, on a date the moon will decide.
Further reading
Image: Ukniw, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons
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