Fiona Apple Postpones South American Tour to Be With Dying Dog

Singer-songwriter Fiona Apple has postponed her South American trek in support of her album The Idler Wheel... due to the declining health of her longtime pet, a pitbull named Janet.

"I am writing to ask them to change our plans and meet a little while later," she said in a lengthy handwritten Facebook post this afternoon. Apple, who wrote the letter Friday evening, said she can't commit to the upcoming tour dates.

"I can't come to South America," she said, referring to the declining health of her dog. "Not now when I got back from the last leg of the US tour, there was a big, big difference.

"I know that she's not sad about aging or dying. But I know that she is coming close to (a) 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 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."

Apple said she's had the dog -- who has had a tumor in her chest for two years now and also has Addison's Disease -- for almost 14 years. The singer found the dog in Echo Park with bite marks on her face and ears and was "one the dogfighters use to puff up the confidence of the contenders."

The singer said the dog has been close beside her over the years.

"She sat next to me when I wrote songs, and barked any time I tried to record something, and she was with me in the studio, all the time we recorded the last album," Apple said, describing Janet as "my best friend and my mother and my daughter, and my benefactor, and she's the one who taught me what love is."

Apple concluded that the decision to be with Janet in her final days was a quick one.

"Sometimes it takes me 20 minutes to pick which socks to wear to bed," Apple said. "But this decision is instant. These are the choices we make, which define us. I am not the woman who puts her career ahead of love and friendship.

"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. "

The South American tour was to begin in Brazil on Nov. 27 and continue through Argentina and Chile before concluding Dec. 9 in Mexico City. There's no word as to when the dates will be rescheduled or if any of the dates will be cancelled as a result.