Dogs in religion being in use the Anubieion catacombs at Saqqara saw the burial of dogs. Dogs were closely associated with Hecate in the Classical world. Dogs were sacred to Artemis and Ares. Cerberus was the three-faced guard dog of the Underworld. Laelaps was a dog in Greek mythology. When Zeus was a baby, a dog, known only as the “golden hound” was charged with protecting the future King of Gods. The dogs are worshipped as a part of a five-day Tihar festival that falls roughly in November every year. The dog ("Shvan") is also the vahana or mount of the Hindu god
The Death of Actaeon a stag and he was attacked and killed by his own hounds. Both paintings belong to a group of large-scale mythological paintings inspired by the "Metamorphoses" and referred to by Titian himself as ‘poesie’, the visual equivalent of poetry, which he began producing for Philip II of Spain in 1551 and which also include "Danaë" (many versions, Philip's in the Prado, Madrid), "Venus and Adonis" (private collection, London, but also other versions), "Perseus and Andromeda" (Wallace Collection, London), "The Rape of Europa" (Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston), "Diana and Actaeon" and "Diana and Callisto" (shared by National Gallery of Scotland