There are dogs that whine. There are dogs that howl at sirens, squirrels, or the UPS truck.

And then there is Winnie Lew.

Winnie Lew doesn’t simply object when I leave the house. She performs a full-scale operatic lament that would make the ghosts of Memphis blues singers rise from their graves and ask, “Honey…who hurt you?”

I knew she had separation anxiety. We’ve lived together long enough for me to recognize the signs. The moment I pick up my keys, she transforms from a reasonably well adjusted twenty-three pounds of fluffy opinion into a four-legged Victorian widow whose beloved has been lost at sea. The ears droop. The eyes grow impossibly large.

She follows me from room to room as though I have just announced I am joining a wagon train headed west and might never return. If I dare put on actual shoes instead of my fuzzy house slippers, she knows.

Dogs have many gifts. Smell. Hearing. The uncanny ability to detect the opening of a potato chip bag from three counties away. Winnie Lew has another supernatural talent: she knows the difference between “I’m taking out the trash” shoes and “I’ll be gone for two hours” shoes.

She never guesses wrong. I usually leave with the reassuring speech every dog owner gives. “I’ll be back soon.” “Here’s a treat.” “You’ll be fine.” “Guard the house.” “Don’t eat anything expensive.”

She watches through the French door with the expression of someone whose trust has been shattered forever. Then I leave.

Now, until recently, I had only my imagination to fill in what happened after my car disappeared around the corner. I pictured Winnie Lew sighing dramatically before settling into one of her many carefully curated napping locations. Apparently I was wildly optimistic.

A month ago my cousin and I spent week at the beach. We stayed in her dog-friendly condo, and Winnie Lew seemed fine with it (with the exception of the duckie diapers) – unless, of course, I had the audacity to go to fish market.

One morning I headed out to forage for our dinner giving Winnie Lew the usual “I’ll be right back” pep talk. Upon my departure, my cousin, decided to record the episode. What she captured should probably be submitted to the Library of Congress.

The video begins innocently enough. The door closes. Silence. Winnie Lew trots to the door mat, looking hopeful. She waits. She stares. She sniffs under the door. Then…The concert begins. Not barking. Not yipping. No, Winnie Lew unleashes a mournful, soul-crushing cry that sounds like the final scene of every sad movie ever made.

And it is long. It is dramatic. It echoes through the condo, with the background noise of my cousins laughing.

It says, “I have been abandoned. Tell my story.” She stands perfectly still, facing the door like a tiny furry lighthouse keeper waiting for ships that will never return. Then comes another wail. Longer. Louder. Even more tragic. You would think she had just watched me board the Titanic.

Or perhaps she believed I had enlisted in the French Foreign Legion. If you didn’t know better, you would assume someone was filming a documentary titled The Last Dog on Earth.

Watching the video later, my cousin and I laughed so hard we nearly fell off the couch. The funniest part wasn’t the noise. It was the commitment. There wasn’t
an ounce of embarrassment. No concern for what the neighbors might think – thank God her condo is at the end of the building. No dignity left to preserve.

She was fully invested in communicating the depth of her suffering. Oscar-worthy. If there were Academy Awards for Emotional Manipulation, my co-pilot would already have cleared a place on the mantel.

After several verses of what I have come to call The Song of Her People, she would stop. Listen. Tilt her head. Surely she thought, Perhaps she’s coming back now. Silence. Nothing. So she’d start all over again.

It was less of a howl and more like a carefully paced sermon in grief. Eventually she wandered into the bedroom. My cousin thought maybe she’d settled down. No. She simply changed venues. The acoustics were better. The whole performance reminded me that dogs have absolutely no concept of time.

To Winnie Lew, five minutes and five hours are emotionally identical. I could be running to the grocery store. I could be picking up dry cleaning. I could be gone exactly fourteen minutes because I forgot cilantro. To Winnie Lew, I have vanished into another dimension from which no human has ever returned.

The strange thing is that I have never once failed to come back. Not once. Every single trip ends the same way. The key turns. The door opens. She explodes with joy. Her fluffy tail—which, as you know, appears to have been borrowed from an entirely different dog—begins spinning like a helicopter rotor. She dances. She
sneezes. She hugs me. She grabs the nearest toy as if to say, “Wonderful! You’re alive! Quick…throw this.”

You would think I’d been deployed overseas for eighteen months instead of buying steamed shrimp. Perhaps that’s why I can’t be annoyed. Her dramatic performances are born out of love. Excessive, unreasonable, over-the-top love.

The kind that believes the best thing in the world is simply being together. Dogs don’t ration affection the way humans do. They don’t pretend to be cool. They
don’t wait three days before returning a text. They don’t say, “I’m emotionally unavailable.” They love with their whole fluffy little selves.

Sometimes that love comes wrapped in a slobbery Yeti toy. Sometimes it comes in muddy paw prints across a freshly mopped floor. Sometimes it comes in a mournful aria sung toward a closed door.

I suspect we’re all a little like Winnie Lew. Most of us have people we miss. People whose presence settles us. People whose absence makes the house feel strangely quiet. We just have better coping mechanisms. Usually.

Still, I confess that every time I watch that beach video, I laugh until tears roll down my face. Not because Winnie Lew is ridiculous. Well…partly because Winnie is ridiculous. But mostly because there is something wonderfully comforting about being loved so completely that your departure deserves its own soundtrack.

It is excessive. It is melodramatic. It is hilariously inconvenient. And it is one of the sweetest gifts I’ve ever been given. Besides, someday I’ll probably be gone longer than a quick trip to dinner or the grocery store.

Until then, I’ll happily endure the guilt trips, the mournful serenades, and the Oscar-worthy performances at the front door. Because somewhere inside that tiny, fluffy body beats the heart of a dog who still can’t quite believe her luck—that after all these years, somebody keeps coming back.

And if that’s the song my co-pilot is singing…

I hope she never forgets the words.

Amy George is an Episcopal priest in Selma, Alabama, where she shares an office with her volunteer pastoral care assistant, Winnie Lew. When not doing God’s work, you can find Amy doing Dog’s work–vacuuming a never ending supply of dog hair, chauffeuring Winnie Lew, and being the provider of endless dog treats. Amy feels blessed to have no fear of ever being attacked by squirrels, UPS delivery people, or small lizards.