After his owner died suddenly in 2006, German Shepherd Capitan has loyally sat by his owner's grave for the past 6 years and has rarely left the graveside of the man who originally got the GSD as a gift for his son in 2005.
After Miguel Guzman's funeral, the family returned home to find that their family pet was gone. "We searched for him but he had vanished," Guzman's widow explained to a local newspaper. "We thought he must have got run over and died." When the family went to visit the gravesite, they found Capitan right there, lying near his former owner.
The family says that they had never taken the dog to the cemetery in the Villa Carlos Paz in central Argentina before and cannot quite explain how the dog knew where the grave was located. "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 explained. "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 and stays there all night." Since the GSD spends so much time at the cemetery, the staff regularly feeds and takes care of him.
The family says that they have tried to bring the dog home several times but that he always returns to the cemetery. It seems that Capitan always returns to the cemetery before it begins to get dark. They believe that the dog does not want to leave Miguel on his own at night. "I think he's going to be there until he dies too," says son Damian. "He's looking after my dad."