While Harry Truman once advised, “If you want a friend in Washington, get a dog,” a pup in Argentina is proving that dogs will be your friend in the afterlife too.
For seven years, a dog named Capitan has loyally sat by his owner’s grave for the past six years, rarely leaving the graveside of the man, Miguel Guzman, who adopted him as a gift for his teenage son in 2005
Guzman died suddenly just one year later, in 2006, and when the family returned from his funeral, Capitan was gone
“We searched for him but he had vanished,” Guzman’s widow reportedly told a local newspaper, The Cordoba. “We thought he must have got run over and died.”
When the family returned to the cemetery, which Capitan had never previously been to, just days later to visit Guzman’s grave the dog was there.
“He [Capitan] turned up here one day, all on his own, and started wandering all around the cemetery until he eventually found the tomb of his master,” the cemetery’s director, Hector Baccega, told the newspaper. “During the day he sometimes has a walk around the cemetery, but always rushes back to the grave. And every day, at 6 o’clock sharp, he lies down on top of the grave stays there all night.”
Though the family brought him home, he slipped away at dusk, walking miles to lie beside the grave until morning. The groundskeepers waited for his nightly arrival, watching this unwavering devotion unfold in a quiet ritual of love and loyalty.
“I’ve tried to bring Capitan home several times, but he always comes straight back to the cemetery,” said the son, 15-year-old Damian. “I think he’s going to be there until he dies too. He’s looking after my dad.”
