a dog to ward off illness

© Trustees of the British Museum (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) 

Say you're a Babylonian living sometime round 700 - 500 BC, and you'd like to get or stay in the pink of health.  Here's something you do:  Get yourself one of these.  This is a gold amulet in the form of a sitting dog, thought to be representative of Gula, the goddess of healing.  Dogs were Gula's favored animal, and images of her often include one.
Want to see the original British Museum page for this?  Here.