Guest Post-Legends of Loyalty

August 17, 2009 by doggymom
Filed under Guest Bloggers

Legends of Loyalty

Greyfriars Bobby waited for his master's return for fourteen years. The small black Skye Terrier had only been with his night watchman master, John Gray, for two years before Gray died of tuberculosis and was buried in the Greyfriars Kirkyard in the town of Old Edinburgh, England.

Two years. And now, the little dog is one of the most famous and enduring symbols of unswerving loyalty in the world.

For fourteen years, as the story is told, Bobby spent every day at his master's gravesite, waiting, leaving only for his meals provided by a nearby restaurant. Some tales say he spent the nights at hospitable homes close by and was given shelter by neighbors of the kirkyard during the cold months. Since local law demanded that ownerless dogs be destroyed, the provost, Sir William Chambers, saw to it that Bobby's license and registration was kept paid and that Bobby “belonged” to the city council and was able to live out his long life watching over his master's resting place until his death at sixteen years old.

It wasn't allowed to bury poor Bobby next to his master, John Gray, in the Kirkyard cemetery proper in consecrated ground, but his body rests inside the gate of the Kirkyard, close by the site of his long watch. The much photographed statue of Bobby sits in front of the Greyfriars Bobby Pub, and his gravesite is marked by a granite monument bearing an inscription admonishing all to “let his loyalty and devotion be a lesson to us all.”

Hachiko the Akita belonged to Hidesaburo Ueno, a professor of agriculture at the University of Tokyo. It was Hachiko's custom to meet Professor Ueno at the Shibuya train station each day after his master came home from work.

In May of 1925, Hachiko's beloved owner suffered a fatal stroke and never made it home. The faithful Akita waited each day at the train station. A compassionate soul took pity on him and gave him a new home, but Hachiko, determined to wait for his old master, left and found his way back to his old house to wait. At length, the dog realized the professor no longer lived there and took up residence at the train station, eating and surviving by the kindness of passengers who saw him each evening and learned of his story. He never appeared until it was time for his master's train.

For ten years Hachiko kept his nightly meeting. During that time, one of Professor Ueno's former students learned of the faithful Akita and became interested in the breed and generated a census of the Akita and found that there were only approximately thirty documentable Akitas left in Japan. Hachiko's sad vigil is likely to have served to resurrect his breed from extinction in its homeland.

Hachiko's body was found in March of 1935. His heart stopped by filarial heartworms. His statue stands guard at his exit — the Hachiko-guchi. Perhaps his faithful soul has at last found his master's.

Not as much is known about Montana's Shep the Sheepdog.

Shep's last walk with his master was in 1936. His master's casket was carried onto the train for burial back east. Shep waited, refusing to leave the Fort Benton depot for six years. He sheltered there, refusing new homes, even in the harsh Montana winters and through the heat of the summer. Waiting and meeting each train in hopes of a reunion with his beloved master.

By 1942, Shep was elderly and slipped on the icy tracks in front of a train he hoped would bring his master home. The engineer couldn't stop the train in time. He was buried near the tracks with a modest wood marker but the old sheepdog's story lived on. Fifty years later, a couple, the Lepleys, put together an organization to raise funds for a monument to Shep.

Shep's image now stands in bronze, larger than real life but not so large as his legend, at the levee in Fort Benton.

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