There’s nothing like human’s best friend. Halsey opened up about their bond with 5-year-old dog, Jagger, who died earlier this week.
“This has been the worst week of my life. Before I had a dog of my own, I would hear people mourn their pets and think ‘it’s just a dog,’ well I couldn’t have been more wrong,” the “Without Me” performer, 27, wrote via Instagram on Saturday, March 5, alongside a slideshow of photos of the canine. “I got Jagger when he was just a few weeks old. I sometimes thought about him passing. How would it feel? Well he’d be old and rickety and grumpy by then. We’d spend the last few years giving him extra ice cream and lazy sunbathing days that he loved when he was too old to run in circles.”
Halsey continued in their post: “I knew it would hurt and I feared it immensely, but I was at peace that we’d have many more years together and he’d have a long good life. Unfortunately, that is not how it happened for us.”
The New Jersey native, who shares son Ender with partner Alev Aydin — announced on Saturday that their beloved pooch had Myelomalacia, calling it “sudden and uncommon and unfair with a catastrophic prognosis.” (Myelomalacia is a spinal cord injury, per the Mayo Clinic.)
“Within 3 days my beautiful baby boy went from chasing imaginary birds around the yard and laying in my lap turning his ears up at the sounds of Sesame Street, to having paralysis spread through his body by the hour,” they wrote in the social media upload. “It was sudden and shocking and I still haven’t even really processed it. I don’t know why I’m sharing all this besides to just say love your pets every single second because anything can change in a moment.”
Halsey noted that Jagger was “my very first love who taught me how to be a mommy” to Ender, now 8 months.
“It’s the most visceral loss I have ever felt. Like the absence of a vital appendage,” Halsey concluded. “Every single second of my day that once revolved around his little habits and routines is now full of just emptiness and silence. If you loved Jagger along with me, thank you for giving him the best life the bestest boy could have ever had. 🌈🌼👑”
The I Would Leave Me If I Could author’s pet parenthood helped prepare them for Ender’s birth in July 2021.
“Halsey is feeling over the moon about being pregnant,” a source exclusively told Us Weekly in February 2021 about their impending arrival. “[They’re] giving [themself] so much tender loving care and focusing on what’s to come. … This is the next chapter of [their] life and [they] see it as somewhat of a new beginning.”
