A Letter To Her Dying Dog

[Guest Willow]

Link to article

Earlier this week, singer/songwriter Fiona Apple postponed her South American tour to be with her dying dog, Janet. She wrote a hand-written letter to her friends explaining her decision. Anyone who has ever owned a pet will identify with Fiona’s beautiful words. Fiona writes:

It’s 6pm on Friday,and I’m writing to a few thousand friends I have not met yet.

I am writing to ask them to change our plans and meet a little while later.

Here’s the thing.

I have a dog Janet, and she’s been ill for almost two years now, as a tumor has been idling in her chest, growing ever so slowly. She’s almost 14 years old now.I got her when she was 4 months old. I was 21 then ,an adult officially – and she was my child.

She is a pitbull, and was found in Echo Park, with a rope around her neck, and bites all over her ears and face.

She was the one the dogfighters use to puff up the confidence of the contenders.

She’s almost 14 and I’ve never seen her start a fight, or bite, or even growl, so I can understand why they chose her for that awful role. She’s a pacifist.

Janet has been the most consistent relationship of my adult life, and that is just a fact.

We’ve lived in numerous houses, and jumped a few make shift families, but it’s always really been the two of us.

She slept in bed with me, her head on the pillow, and she accepted my hysterical, tearful face into her chest, with her paws around me, every time I was heartbroken, or spirit-broken, or just lost, and as years went by, she let me take the role of her child, as I fell asleep, with her chin resting above my head.

She was under the piano when I wrote songs, barked any time I tried to record anything, and she was in the studio with me all the time we recorded the last album.

The last time I came back from tour, she was spry as ever, and she’s used to me being gone for a few weeks every six or seven years.

She has Addison’s Disease, which makes it dangerous for her to travel since she needs regular injections of Cortisol, because she reacts to stress and to excitement without the physiological tools which keep most of us from literally panicking to death.

Despite all of this, she’s effortlessly joyful and playful, and only stopped acting like a puppy about 3 years ago.

She’s my best friend and my mother and my daughter, my benefactor, and she’s the one who taught me what love is.

I can’t come to South America. Not now.

This is the letter Fiona wrote.

When I got back from the last leg of the US tour, there was a big, big difference.

She doesn’t even want to go for walks anymore.

I know that she’s not sad about aging or dying. Animals have a survival instinct, but a sense of mortality and vanity, they do not. That’s why they are so much more present than people.

But I know that she is coming close to point where she will stop being a dog, and instead, be part of everything. She’ll be in the wind, and in the soil, and the snow, and in me, wherever I go.

I just can’t leave her now, please understand.

If I go away again, I’m afraid she’ll die and I won’t have the honor of singing her to sleep, of escorting her out.

Sometimes it takes me 20 minutes to pick which socks to wear to bed.

But this decision is instant.

These are the choices we make, which define us.

I will not be the woman who puts her career ahead of love and friendship.

I am the woman who stays home and bakes Tilapia for my dearest, oldest friend.

And helps her be comfortable, and comforted, and safe, and important.

Many of us these days, we dread the death of a loved one. It is the ugly truth of Life, that keeps us feeling terrified and alone.

I wish we could also appreciate the time that lies right beside the end of time.

I know that I will feel the most overwhelming knowledge of her, and of her life and of my love for her, in the last moments.

I need to do my damnedest to be there for that.

Because it will be the most beautiful, the most intense, the most enriching experience of life I’ve ever known.

When she dies.

So I am staying home, and I am listening to her snore and wheeze, and reveling in the swampiest, most awful breath that ever emanated from an angel.

And I am asking for your blessing. I’ll be seeing you.

Love, Fiona.

[Daisys Mum]

how heartwarming and heartbreaking all at the same time

[harley]

Oh that made me teary

[Panto]

So beautiful... Tearies, unashamed tearies here...

[Simply Grand]

Oh

[melzawelza]

Yep, I cried when I read it the other day

[Guest Labradork]

Oh, how beautiful. It didn't make me cry but it was very moving. What a great writer she is.

[Guest Clover]

The way it should be.

[skully]

crying here....

[Staffyluv]

Anyone that has ever had the love of a dog, knows what she is going through and understands this is how it should be.

[Pollywaffle]

I'm just about to go into a meeting and now will be going in red-eyed..how profoundly true.

[kiesha09]

Amazingly well written and so true. As a dog/animal lover I totally get it and hope her fans will too.

[Katdogs]

I saw that on Facebook from PetRescue, and even Ricky Gervais re-tweeted it. It's beautiful and says so clearly what so many of us feel. It seems to be connecting to many many people.

ETA a lovely article about Fiona Apple's decision, from The Guardian:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2012/nov/21/fiona-apple-tour-dying-dog

Why Fiona Apple is right to cancel her tour for her dying dog

Any dog owner knows that, whatever your job, everything goes on hold when your companion needs you

Musicians cancel tours for many, many reasons. A guitarist might have injured their hand; recording sessions might have overrun; the singer might be suffering "nervous exhaustion"; they might be covering up poor ticket sales. But last night, the US singer-songwriter Fiona Apple wrote an open letter on her Facebook page to say she was cancelling her South American dates to look after her dog, Janet, who is dying with a tumour.

Shortly after Apple's post appeared, several hundred followers had sent messages of support. By this morning, they numbered in the thousands.

Even non-dog owners have been moved by Apple's confession that her pitbull is "my best friend and my mother and my daughter, and my benefactor, and she's the one who taught me what love is". But dog owners best understand the special, almost telepathic bond that can develop between a canine and a human being, and grasp why fans have been so supportive, how Apple's career will have suddenly paled into insignificance, and how much she is hurting.

Her decision reminds me of something I went through. In 1998, I was working away in the US for a pop magazine when my own beloved dog, Henry, was hit by a car. Back home, I nursed him for a month, listening to his howls of agony in the night. While he was ill, the magazine called me to say they needed the story urgently, so I completed it despite having to put Henry's suffering to one side to work. Two days later, I noticed a tiny error in the piece and called them to correct it. They hadn't even looked at what I'd written, and when the vet told me we could do no more, I was mortified that I had spent what turned out to be some of Henry's last hours whittling away at a piece that wasn't so urgent after all. I had no other offers of work at the time, but made the decision to never write for that magazine again.

This summer, when we lost Henry's equally loved successor, Guinness, on the operating table to a cancerous hemangiosarcoma, a record company publicist asked me what I thought of a new album by a band called Dog Is Dead. I emailed back to say that I was very sorry but I couldn't listen to it because my dog had just died.

"Yikes. Sorry about that. Name is unfortunate, but reckon the sounds you may like."

The music business never was big on sensitivity. I've since been asked to write about the same band and have said I couldn't and I never will.

Reading Fiona Apple's words about why she cancelled the tour brought all this back and more, as did hearing Band of Horses on Monday night singing "the dog is gone" in Ode to LRC – their own requiem to a lost friend.

For most dog owners, in most jobs, the companionship of a dog is as important as anything else in their lives. There's no reason for it to be different just because the dog owner happens to be an internationally famous musician. Fiona Apple has spent 13 years with Janet sleeping in her bed, accepting the singer's "hysterical, tearful face into her chest, with her paws around me, every time I was heartbroken", and barking under the piano as she wrote songs.

Similarly, Henry saw me through student life, the death of my mother, poverty and unemployment. Guinness was by my side during the end of a long relationship, career travails, the deaths of relatives and friends and the birth of my first son, who arrived, heartbreakingly, just two weeks after the dog whose bark he will have heard in the womb was taken from us. And I was there for Guinness whenever he was hungry, was bullied by a bigger dog or had a thorn in his paw.

I never got the chance to say goodbye to either of my own best friends. Fiona Apple has been given that chance and must take it. As she puts it: "These are the choices we make, which define us. I will not be the woman who puts her career ahead of love and friendship. I am the woman who stays home and bakes tilapia for my dearest, oldest friend. And helps her be comfortable, and comforted, and safe, and important."

There will no doubt be some who will not understand her, who will mock and ridicule, but Apple's decision says much about her as a person and an artist. She has chosen to put her career, cheering crowds and who knows how many dollars in losses secondary to the final needs of her small animal companion.

Edited November 23, 2012 by Katdogs

[indigirl]

Incredible piece of writing. I admire her for being able to put it on paper, I can never find the words myself to express my love for my dogs. Somehow the words I use never seem big enough. Lovely lady and what a cherished dog :)

[Simply Grand]

Oh katdogs, that has my tears flowing even more. However sad the loss is I know none of us would ever trade it