Poki, the wonder-dog of Oahu, never was a man, although sometimes he was clouds. To summon Poki one was obliged to stand on a particular rock — named the sacred bell rock of Kamoiliili because of the sound it produced if sharply struck — and speak of one's desire to see him. And there he'd be, big as life, stretched along the mountains and moonlit-silvery. Poki was an eminently peaceful pooch.
Not so, Ku. If I understand this one legend correctly, Ku was a man, and then a little friendly dog, and then a man again, and then a huge ferocious dog. All this was before he was turned into two large stones. Eventually he, too, could be seen in the clouds, but not in the Poki-clouds, presumably.
It's a bit disturbing actually, contemplating Ku and his escapades. He did after all chew up quite a few people during his career on Oahu. But this was during a time when war was being waged against him, and stuff like that simply happens during war, so what are you going to do.
All Ku really wanted was to marry Na-pihe-nui, whom he'd first seen while she was sporting naked with a few girlfriends in a pool beneath some gentle waterfalls. But Polihale, Na-pihe-nui's dad and high chief of the land at that time, didn't take too kindly to this idea. So he and his followers put an end to that, but it took some time and quite a number of them had to be eaten for the cause.
It is interesting to note that it was the priests who transformed the dead and bifurcated Ku into stones. I'm willing to bet this is a non-marketable skill nowadays, and that the tradition has been lost and no priests know how to do such a thing anymore.
