Fiona Apple posted a heartfelt, handwritten note on her Facebook page Tuesday explaining that she has canceled the latest leg of her worldwide tour to care for her sick pit bull named Janet, who is on her death bed.
Apple adopted Janet when the dog was just four months old and the now 35-year-old singer was only 21.
“I am not 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,” writes Apple in the four-page post. “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.”
Apple's 14-year-old dog is currently suffering from Addison’s disease and a tumor in her chest. Because of the dog's regularly required injections of Cortisol, the singer says she is unable to travel.
The letter does not specify exactly which performances will be canceled, but a list of tour dates on Apple’s website has been replaced by the emotional letter. However, the note does appear to imply that Apple may reschedule the shows, asking fans to "meet a little while later."
Read the full text of the letter (pictured at right) below:
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 t
umor 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.