Halsey is mourning the death of her five-year-old dog, Jagger, with a heartbreaking and candid post on social media.
On Instagram, the singer — who uses she/they pronouns — posted a series of adorable photos of Jagger that documented his life as a puppy to his full grown self, including a snap posing alongside Halsey’s child, Ender Ridley Aydin. In the caption, she penned a lengthy, heartbreaking message memorializing her dog after what she described as 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.” Halsey wrote. “ 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. 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.”
The 27-year-old shared that unfortunately, that was not how things ultimately panned out for her dog.
“Jagger was 5 years old and yesterday we lost him to a progressive condition called Myelomalacia,” she explained. “It is sudden and uncommon and unfair with a catastrophic prognosis. 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.”
Halsey said that his death was “sudden and shocking” and that she hasn’t had the time to process everything yet.
“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,” she added. “My very first love, who taught me how to be a mommy. My sweet, sarcastic, so very human boy. Every single person who had the privilege of meeting jagger will never forget him. He was that special.”
Halsey shared some advice to those who aren’t pet owners, writing, “If you’re reading this and you don’t have a pet, you might be thinking ‘it’s just a dog.’ Like I maybe used to. But I can tell you you’re wrong. So f——ng wrong.”
“It’s the most visceral loss I have ever felt,” she added. “Like the absence of a vital appendage. 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.”
Fans and friends flooded the comments with their condolences, sending their love to Halsey as she grieved the loss of her beloved dog.
“Oh my god my heart is broken for you!!!” Finneas O’Connell, Billie Eilish’s brother, wrote.
Hailey Bieber added, “I’m so sorry” with a series of crying emojis.
“i’m sobbing,” record producer Benny Blanco wrote. “i love u jagger i hope u r running circles around an imaginary pool in heaven right now.”
Some fans even shared their own stories of loss with the singer in the comments with one fan writing, “ash i am so so sorry for your loss :( i lost my boy just two months ago and it’s a pain so incredibly hard to describe or even wrap your head around.”
“it feels like you can’t breathe anymore, and you just miss the small things they used to do… he was not ‘just a dog’, he was your family, a very important being to you,” they continued. “i hope that, if by some chance you see this, the pain for you will get easier over time. it is so incredibly hard, and I’m still dealing with my grief even two months later and I’m not sure will ever stop, but soon it will be easier to breathe again. again i am so so incredibly sorry for your loss.”
Hours after posting, Halsey returned to the comments and shared a continuation to their original message to offer clarification on their thoughts, writing, “I wrote this in a very emotional place and I guess what I meant to say was: I have always loved animals. But I didn’t understand how deep that love could run until it was taught to me by such a perfect and innocent creature."
“I knew pet loss should be mourned but I never realized it could hurt as bad as a losing a person,” she explained. “In my search for answers, I came across a study that says research shows losing a pet is comparable in every way to losing a person. Our brains don’t know the difference they just feel the loss.”
She took a moment to acknowledge that to some, her post “may seem trivial” given the daily suffering humans go through before adding, “but I was just looking for somewhere to put my grief cause it’s way too big to hold right now.”
Halsey thanked their friends and fans who gave their condolences or shared their own stories of similar loss, concluding the comment, “I usually hate the internet but today it really made me feel better and I’m sending out all the virtual hugs.”