Loyal Dog Spends Two Weeks on Doorstep of Owner Who Will Never Come Home Again

By Sumitra on February 29th, 2016 Category: Animals

A German Shepherd recently won the hearts millions with a stunning display of love and loyalty reminiscent of the legendary Hachiko. According to eye-witnesses in his Houston neighborhood, the dog spent weeks at the front gate of his apartment complex patiently waiting for his owner, not knowing he had been killed and would never return.

54-year-old Hatem Abuharbid was killed on February 7, when the convenience store where he worked was robbed. He was shot in the thigh by the two robbers, and the bullet pierced through an artery in his leg. He died later at the hospital due to heavy bleeding. Meanwhile, his German Shepherd back home kept waiting for Abuharbid to come back, as he did every evening.

“Of course he’s confused because he doesn’t know what’s going on,” said Cassandra Eubanks, a neighbor. “He hadn’t seen his owner in two weeks. You could just tell that he was a lost dog. He would follow the cars and when he would realise that it was not his owner’s car, he would just stand there and look helpless.”

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Photo: video caption

The residents of the apartment complex took pity on the dog and left food and water for him, but he wouldn’t go near anyone. He just wouldn’t budge from the gate, so the residents put up pleas for help on social media. Maranda Perez, who lives nearby, read these messages and arrived at the scene with her own dog, spending an entire hour trying to gain the German Shepherd’s trust. He apparently ran up three flights of stairs before she could get close enough to put a leash on him.

“It just broke my heart to hear that poor animal lost his owner, his best friend,” she said. “He was still very shaken up whenever I touched him.”

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Photo: video caption

Perez has now taken the dog in for a week, after which Abuharbid’s brother will arrive to adopt him.

This is just one of the many examples of incredible canine loyalty we’ve featured on Oddity Central. In 2012, we wrote about Capitan, a faithful dog who refused to leave his master’s grave six years after he had died, and in 2014 we brought you the story of Huachito, Bolivia’s most loyal dog, who still waited for his owner five years after his death. Last year, we had Shavi, a stray who walked 300 kilometers to return to the owner who had saved her from certain death.