‘Dogs were closely associated with Hecate in the Classical world. They were one of her most important attributes,[35] with a fragment of Euripides describing them as her sacred animal.[36] The sacrifice of dogs to her is attested in Thrace …..’Like Hecate, "the dog is a creature of the threshold, the guardian of doors and portals, and so it is appropriately associated with the frontier between life and death, and with demons and ghosts which move across the frontier.’