Wikipedia has a collection of famous dog stories that are certain to get the feels going—the section on “faithful dogs” in particular. Here are a few highlights (text is quoted directly from Wikipedia, links are from footnotes):

• Hachikō, an Akita who became a symbol of loyalty in Japan, is now honored by a statue in Tokyo. Hachikō is famous for his loyalty to his long dead master Hidesaburō Ueno, by returning to the train station and waiting for his return, every day for the next nine years during the time the train was scheduled to arrive.

• Greyfriars Bobby, a Skye Terrier in Edinburgh, Scotland, was loyal to his master long after his master’s death in 1858. Until Bobby’s death 14 years later, he reportedly spent every night at his master’s grave. A statue in memorial of Greyfriars Bobby was erected near the graveyard.

• Capitán, a German Shepherd Dog, ran away from his home in central Argentina, after the death of his owner Miguel Guzmán in 2006. About a week later, Guzmán’s family found Capitán standing guard at Guzmán’s grave after finding the cemetery on his own. When brought home, Capitán again ran away back to the grave of his former owner. As of 2012, he continues to stand vigil over his owner’s grave and receives provisions from the cemetery staff so he does not need to leave.
• Hawkeye, a Labrador retriever, stayed by the coffin of his owner, Jon Tumilson, a Navy SEAL who was killed in Afghanistan in 6 August 2011 when the CH-47 Chinook he was riding on was shot down by a rocket-propelled grenade.
• Constantine, German Shepherd Dog aka Kostya or Faithful Kostya, in the mid-1990s in Togliatti, Russia – a family died in a car crash during the summer of 1995, leaving the dog as the only survivor. A German Shepherd Dog, named Constantine by the locals, kept coming to the same spot for the next 7 years braving freezing winters and hot summers. The Monument of Devotion – a bronze statue honouring the dog’s loyalty was placed on that spot in 2003 by the city authorities .

You know where I’m going with this, don’t you?

Yup, the saddest animation moment ever created, from Futurama‘s “Jurassic Bark.”

Photo credits: Hachikō photo by jpvargas [CC BY-SA 2.0], via Flickr; Greyfriars Bobby photo by Michael Reeve [GFDL or CC-BY-SA-3.0], via Wikimedia Commons.