When I returned from my year in Italy some time ago — longer ago than I care to measure now — and I came to live in this temporary home loaned to me by a friend, in walking about the neighborhood and searching for some kind of tethers I made friends with a dog who was always alone in front of a red brick house nearby.

She was black and short-haired and sinewy, like a young elegant horse, with a clean, lean face and deep chocolate eyes. She reminded me of a lover’s dog I once knew, named Pansy. Mostly, she was really sweet, and lonely, and wanting for play and love. Her peeps, I came to learn, were doctors, and between both of their busy schedules rarely were they both home, and, most often, neither of them.

I have never been a dog person, taken mostly by cats. But every day, the longer she came to watch me walk by on her street, this sweet dog, well-cared for and enclosed in a generous yard shaded by lovely oaks and delineated by an electric dog fence, she came to beckon me, seemingly looking out for me, alert as I came into her view. As she saw me coming, she’d get up and come to her boundary, wagging her tail enthusiastically.

Reluctant at first, I came to near her electric fence, and she came to greet me. Slowly, she invited me in, further and further, and bit by bit I came onto the grass and into her driveway to pet her, and I learned from her tags that her name was Girley.

Over the course of many months, in this neighborhood new and foreign to me, Girley and I made friends, she looking out for me on the horizon, brown eyes pointed as I approached on my daily walks, and I calling for her as she came to her electric limit and rolled down onto the ground to be petted, knowing I would come to her, and surely I would.

She was so sweet and giving, and there—something stable and nice. In time, she waited for me, even when I drove by in my car, the old green Volvo whose rumbling she came to recognize, and in this daily routine Girley came to fill the void of other things — people, animals, places lost and gone, too many to mention. Every day I looked forward to the playfulness of her bark and the pleasure of rubbing her belly, her eyes closed in bliss in what became a shared moment of trust and companionship.

I came to love Girley more than I knew.

Last month, I noticed a For Sale sign in the yard of Girley’s home, and I learned that Girley’s peeps were moving to Tennessee. My eyes stung at the sight of the sign and I stopped to gather myself, feeling a bit bottomless. I was not surprised to feel the looming loss of Girley full of grief for me, but I felt regret mostly for not being able to communicate to this unknowing dog — not mine to own, not mine to love—how much I would miss her.

One dawn last week, Girley’s family moved and took her with, to Tennessee. They left. That morning when I went for my walk I paused with heaviness to note the absence of her water and food bowls gone from the porch. Nothing but silence, the void of people having moved. There is nothing else like it, specifically.

I imagined her in the back of the car looking out onto the countryside, traveling through the states, and it made me smile, yet cry.

And now, every day when I come to Girley’s house I continue to look for her, against my own knowledge that she is gone. I picture her there, nose in the air, tail wagging low to the ground, like a cartoon happy dog. I miss her, for sure — and the great joy she gave me.

Farewell, Girley girl.