Known as man’s best friend, dogs are known for their unwavering loyalty to their owners.

But one faithful dog has set a new standard even for canines, having waited by the roadside in Siberia for more than a year after its owner tragically died in a car accident.

The dog has braved the freezing cold winters of Siberia, where temperatures regularly drop to -5C, in the hope of his owner’s return, and he refuses to caught by wildlife lovers hoping to help it.

It has become known locally a the ‘Siberian Hachiko’, after the Japanese Akita dog who returned to the train station where his owner left him every day for nearly ten years after his death. 

The loyal Siberian dog, thought to be a mongrel, was left behind after the car crash in autumn 2014 when people first started noticing it standing beside the road and tried to catch it.

When it refused to be caught, animal lovers started feeding the dog, and they even put a kennel beside the road in Berkut, near Yalutorovsk in south-central Russia’s Tyumen Oblast region.

The dog escaped tragedy when the kennel, which was too near to the road, was was destroyed by a truck, but a new one was built a few weeks later.

Even after that, the animal still came back to the roadside, and continued to wait for its owner.

Animal activist Anastasia Selina said: ‘We haven’t been able to get anywhere near the animal, it only seems to want to get to its previous owner and as far as we know they didn’t survive the car accident.

‘It doesn’t trust anyone else, and will not even let anybody even stroke it. We advise people not to disturb it, because we are worried it might run under a car if it gets scared.’

A campaign has now been started to find a home for the dog and to capture him once and for all.

The pooch had tugged at the heartstrings of the nation when he waited at Tokyo’ s Shibuya Station for his owner to return – appearing every day precisely when the train was due at the station. Hachiko continued to wait for many years until his own death, never seeming to accept that his owner was not coming back.

SEE ALSO: Unwavering Loyalty: Dog Stays by Owner’s Final Resting Place for More Than a Year