Fiona Apple Cancels Tour, Re: Awesome Dedication to Dog

Singer/Songwriter Fiona Apple has disappointed some fans because she has just canceled her South American tour.

While some people would think her reasoning is trivial, it's actually poignant and instructive to all of us, especially dog owners.

Fiona Apple

Apple said she canceled because her best friend, her 14-year-old pitbull Janet, is dying, and Apple said she wants to be there for Janet.

Apple explained herself in a four page letter she posted to Facebook, and it's a classic rendering of the age old question: When somebody lovingly adopts a dog in trouble and gives the pooch a nice, comfortable life, who benefits more, the adopter or adoptee?

As is often the case, it's hard to tell which won the most in Apple's case. The answer is probably both.

I certainly have new respect for Apple. I was never much of a fan of her music. She's definitely a hugely talented singer and songwriter, but her work just was never my cup of tea.

She had this to say about her own and Janet's perspective as the end approaches:

"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."

Apple' decision to postpone her tour seems to be a matter of priorities. Here she is again:

"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".

Well, Fiona, for what it's worth, you have my blessing, that's for sure.