When Cinna the mini dachshund realized her owner was leaving the house without her, she did something that left viewers on social media in tears.
Mai-Christine Hoang, from Dublin, Ireland, posted a clip of what happened to her TikTok, @cinna_the_mini_dachshund, writing, “I’m so sorry Cinna” alongside it. Hoang and her partner got the canine after a stint working as dogsitters. “We minded an adorable dachshund,” Hoang told Newsweek. “My partner fell in love with dachshunds and their big personalities. He insisted we should get a dachshund so we eventually chose Cinna.”
Hoang and the dog have been inseparable ever since. “Cinna loves following us around,” she said. “Her favorite thing to do is to lie down on our face or on top of our chest. She loves being in physical contact with us all the time, even the most inconvenient situations.”
Cinna has a happy life with Hoang, but there is one small issue. “She hates walks,” Hoang said. As a result, the owner usually has to take a bag anywhere they go that’s big enough to fit Cinna in after she has had enough of walking. “When she’s sick of it, she won’t budge at all so we have no choice but to carry her,” Hoang said.
On that particular day, however, the plan was for Hoang to go out and do some shopping while Cinna stayed at home with her partner. Hoang would normally take her out with her, but few, if any, of the shops where they live are “dog friendly.”
It didn’t take long for Cinna to realize what was going on. “I was getting dressed to go to the shops that day, and she saw me getting ready,” Hoang said. “She knew I was going to leave without her because I didn’t call her once to get her harness on, I didn’t prepare her blanket and ask her to go into her bag. I was just rushing to get dressed to go to the shops.”
The relationship between dog and owner shares some similarities to that child and parent. A 2013 study published in the journal PLOS One highlighted this. Researchers observed 25 test subjects and their dogs entered a new room together.
The pets were free to explore the room, while researchers watched whether the canines felt safe with their owner then. They then observed as a stranger entered the room to see how the dog responded. Next, the pup’s owner left the room, with researchers tasked with measuring how upset the animal became in terms of whining, pacing and going to the door. In the majority of cases, the dogs exhibited separation distress.
Then researchers saw how the canines responded when the owner came back in. They noticed that the dogs looked excited and happy when reunited with their owners; the stronger the greeting, the stronger the level of attachment. Researchers concluded that the behaviors exhibited by the dogs in the experiment matched those of human babies toward their caregivers. This suggests canines form real attachment bonds with their owners, rather than simply being dependent on them.
In that context, seeing Hoang heading off without her must have been upsetting to Cinna, even if she wasn’t being left home alone. Luck was on the dog’s side, though: the bag Hoang usually carries her in had been left by the door.
“Usually, when we go somewhere, she can come along—that isn’t a walk—we’ll get her bag ready and leave it on the floor in front of her so she climbs in it by herself,” Hoang said. “When we come home, we lower the bag to the floor so she can jump off in her own time. Sometimes, she takes a few more minutes to get out. In the meantime, we get undressed, go back to what we have to do, and forget the bag in the hallway. That day, we didn’t put away her bag.”
So, when Hoang went to leave a few minutes later, she was confronted by a heartbreaking sight: Cinna sitting in the bag, looking up at her with the saddest expression on her face. “Cinna went into her bag by herself, in case I might’ve forgotten her or maybe in hope I’d decide to bring her since she already packed herself,” Hoang said.
The owner ended up capturing what happened on camera, with the resulting clip tugging on the heartstrings of many fellow animal lovers on social media. “This is too sad,” one viewer commented. “I can’t,” a second added.
“I was surprised it was so popular,” Hoang said. “I think it could be, because I left her behind while she looked so eager and hopeful to come along, everyone felt sad for her.”
Cinna’s story does have a happy ending, though. A few minutes after the camera stopped rolling, when Hoang had made a swift exit, her partner stepped in to make sure Cinna got all the love, cuddles and attention she needed.