A dog’s loyalty to its owner is unshakeable. Even during the toughest times, they will remain by their human’s side.

Gunner, an 11-year-old lab, was an extremely loyal pooch.

He has never left Daniel Hove’s side. Everywhere his human went, he was there. They turned out to be hunting buddies and best friends, too.

When Daniel received his pancreatic cancer diagnosis, Gunner was with him.

Gunner was loyal through it all.

Even though he was a big dog, he’d go to Daniel and the two would cuddle up together. They’d spend an entire day like that.

“They were best buddies till the end. They were hunting buddies, they went everywhere together,” Daniel’s daughter, Heather Nicoletti, said in an interview Kare 11.

The Air Force veteran and his dog were literally inseparable.

Eventually, though, Gunner fell ill.

This was a bit expected, as the family noticed how incredibly in sync the two were.

Daniel’s daughter, Heather, shared that she and her family more or less based their expectations of her dad’s daily health off of his dog.

“My dad was unresponsive, the dog was unresponsive. So once we saw how the dog was doing–he wasn’t moving much anymore, not doing well– we knew, it was coming.”

One day, Gunner grew listless.

His arms began to swell and he fell more ill. At that point, Heather knew that it was time to say goodbye to her dad’s dog.

She called the clinic she used to work at. When she got there, they put her dad’s long-beloved dog to sleep. He was right there beside him as he passed.

Within just an hour and a half, Daniel was gone too.

Knowing what happened to Gunner, the family couldn’t help but feel that the loving veteran would be gone soon as well. They did everything together, after all.

“Gunner could not be without my dad. I think he chose to go with him,” Heather continued.

However, they didn’t expect them to pass away within such a short time of each other. Losing both of them within the span of 90 minutes dealt a heavy blow to the ones that Gunner and Daniel left behind.

The family was devastated.

It’s always so sad to say goodbye to someone close to your heart. For Heather, she took comfort in the fact that her father never really had to say goodbye to his devoted, loving, and loyal dog.

In a sense, his passing couldn’t have gone any better. He wouldn’t be making the trip to the afterlife alone. His best friend was now with him even into eternity.

Now, Daniel and Gunner get to be together forever, pain-free.

In that sense, at least, the family was able to spare them from the pain of saying goodbye to each other.

“I had said I don’t know what’s going to be more traumatic for him. To try to take him away to end–to put him to sleep– to end his suffering, or if you let him live through dad dying. I think either way it’s going to kill him. We knew they were going to go together. We just didn’t know it was going to be hours apart,” -Heather shared.

Watch the video below to share in some of Gunner and his Dad’s most precious memories together.

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In 2014, inspired by his rescued Siberian Husky Splash, Justin Palmer started a Facebook page called I Love Dogs. The page quickly grew to over a million fans and in 2015, Justin cofounded iHeartDogs.com with Marshall Morris, an army veteran. Inspired by their passions for helping shelter dogs and supporting our veterans, Justin and Marshall built a line of products that give back to shelters and raise money to provide service dogs for veterans in need.