It's the end of the year, which means it's the end of the year-end lists. (The Stranger has been publishing several of them. Have you read about our favorite podcasts and albums and books this year? You should. They're good. But stay with me for a second.) I love these lists because they direct me away from the internet and into the living world of art and sandwiches and love. But, every once in a while, I enjoy a good long stroll down a rabbit hole. The greatest confluence of the internet's rabbit holes is Wikipedia's "List of List of Lists," and the best of these lists of lists of lists is the "List of Individual Dogs."

The writer Willie Fitzgerald introduced me to this incredible compendium of compendiums several years ago when he sent me a link to a list of cross-linguistic onomatopoeias, which is a list of the words different languages use for common noises. The list of heart beating sounds has since become my favorite poem.

Soon he and I were trading links to pages back and forth with abandon. Lists of diseases contracted by strawberries. Lists of artificial objects on the moon. You get the idea.

I'm not sure why it took me so long to navigate from "Lists of Animals" to "List of Individual Dogs," but that doesn't matter. What matters is this digital kennel hosts the most heartbreaking and heartwarming stories about dogs you're likely to find on the internet. Within this list of lists you'll find dogs of unusual size, the dogs of poets, "real dogs in literature," war dogs, space dogs, faithful dogs, and, my favorite, "other faithful dogs."

Let's look at some highlights.

• A mutt in Argentina named Capitán has reportedly been guarding his owner's grave since his owner's death in 2006. Cemetery staffers make sure the dog is fed because they understand Capitán is a very good dog.

• There's a famous Japanese dog named Hachikō, who for nine years waited at the Shibuya train station every evening in anticipation of his dead master's return. He eventually died of worms, a good dog nonetheless.

• And then there's sweet Huang Huang, who searches busses all day for his dead human. According to the The Daily Mail (which, I know, but, still): "Every day he has waited patiently in line for the bus to arrive, boarded with other passengers and then scoured the seats, whimpering as he goes. Drivers say he spends ten hours every day searching any bus that passes. But finally, as night falls, he gives up and disappears into the darkness, only to return the next day to start again."

• On the lighter and more literary side of life, there's Flush, a cocker spaniel belonging to the poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Virginia Woolf, one of the greatest writers of the 20th century, wrote a funny and pretty substantial biography of the dog entitled, of course, Flush: A Biography. You can read the whole thing right here.

• The Welsh legend of Gelert is a moving, cautionary tale about the dangers of allowing your impulses to direct your actions, and it may make you cry a little bit. Tl;dr: if you think your dog killed your baby, how dare you.

I could go on, but I'm ruining all the fun. Anyway, Merry Christmas, you're welcome.