A loyal dog in Greece recently melted the hearts of millions around the world after it was reported that it has spent the last 18 months at a roadside shrine where his owner tragically lost his life in a traffic accident.

Nicknamed the “Greek Hachiko” after the legendary Akita Inu who spent years waiting at a train station in Japan for his owner who had passed away, the unnamed white dog has reportedly been living at a roadside shrine near the Greek town of Nafpaktos for the last year and a half. Despite several the efforts of several locals to adopt the dog, he keeps escaping and always returns to the place where his owner lost his life in a car crash.

Photo: Nafpaktia News/YouTube

The death of the fateful dog’s owner, a 40-year-old man named Haris, shocked the region on November 9, 2017, as only a few years earlier, his brother had perished in a similar accident. The two brothers both lost their lives only a few miles away from their homes, but in Haris’ case the story became even more tragic as his dog remained by the roadside shrine erected in his memory, as if waiting for him to return.

It’s unknown if the dog was in the car at the time of the accident, or how he made his way to the shrine, which is located in the middle of nowhere, miles away from the nearest human settlement, but locals say he’s been waiting there ever since the tragedy that claimed Haris’ life.

After trying to relocate the dog only to see him return to the roadside shrine every time, people built an improvised shelter for him and started bringing him food and water every day. He reportedly spends his days lying in the dirt and looking in the distance as if waiting for his late owner to came back and take him home. The dog refuses to budge even on hot days, taking refuge in the bushes next to the shrine.

 

The loyal dog went viral in Greece last week, after local news website Nafpaktia News posted a video about him on YouTube.

This is just the latest of the many stories of canine loyalty we’ve featured on Oddity Central in the last few years. There was Capitan, the German shepherd who waited by his owner’s grave for over a decade, Fu Shi, a small dog in South Korea who had been waiting for his elderly owner to come home for three years, Huachito, nicknamed Bolivia’s most loyal dog, and most recently, the “Argentinian Hachiko“, who had been waiting outside the police station where his owner was arrested for over a year.