Lady Gaga recently had to endure a pet owner’s worst nightmare: Her dog walker was shot and two of her beloved dogs were kidnapped. Fortunately, in a matter of days, the dogs were recovered and everything was in its right place. Gaga offered a $500,000 reward for whoever brought the dogs back, which just goes to show how much some people care about their pets. That got us thinking about other famous artists and their four-legged friends who we see pop up from time to time on social media and whatnot.
We’ve rounded up a handful of my favorites below, but this is by no means a comprehensive list of celebrity pets, so our sincerest apologies if your preferred artist’s furry/scaly/otherwise textured friend isn’t included. Now, if you’re recently found yourself asking, ‘Who’s a good boy,’ you can find some answers to that question below.
Coco, Toulouse, Cinnamon, Strauss, Lafayette, Pignoli, Myron, Snape, Lily, and Piggy Smallz (owned by Ariana Grande)
Grande’s dogs make social media appearances pretty often, but fans may not realize just how many puppers she actually has: According to Ariana Grande Wiki (which is surely the authoritative source on such matters), she currently owns nine dogs. That’s enough for 5-on-5 basketball if they let Grande’s pig Piggy Smallz play. As if that wasn’t enough, Grande is also working on an animal rescue center in Los Angeles, which indicates that she is perhaps the best friend to animals in the biz.
Lavender (owned by Dylan Baldi of Cloud Nothings and Sadie Dupuis of Speedy Ortiz and Sad13)
Towards the end of last year, indie-rock power couple Baldi and Dupuis decided to adopt Lavender, a pitbull with atypical facial features. In a recent interview with MTV News, Baldi said of Lavender, “She’s a one-of-a-kind dog. People will just stop and be like, ‘Look at this dog,’ and want to be with this dog in a way like no other dog I’ve seen. It’s like having a rare Pokémon.” He doubled down on his admiration of the unique pet with a Twitter follow-up: “if we did a tour, charged $50 for tickets, and all that happened was this dog came out onstage and walked around for a bit? you would still feel like you spent $50 correctly. incredible dog.”
Trappy S. Goyard (owned by 2 Chainz)
Like other famous pets, Trappy S. Goyard (which is easily the best name on this list) has his own Instagram account. Goyard probably also has a SAG card by now based on all the appearances they’d made. In addition to popping up on 2 Chainz’s Most Expensivest, Goyard also co-starred in the “Grey Area” video from earlier this year, in which Goyard and their human swapped heads.
Calippo and Dorito (owned by Ed Sheeran)
Sheeran stayed mostly out of the public eye during 2020 as he decided to take a break. What he didn’t stop doing, though, was posting about his cats on their dedicated Instagram page, which boasts over 300,000 followers. Calippo and Dorito are doing well, although Dorito could apparently stand to lose a bit of weight: In October, Sheeran shared a photo of the cats accompanied by a note that reads, “Don’t feed the cats!!! Even if Dorito gives you ‘the eyes’… She has a bad tum… naughty puss…”
Shark (owned by Billie Eilish)
About a month ago, Eilish celebrated the first birthday of Shark, the rescue dog she adopted in April. She wrote in a now-unavailable Instagram post, “My sweet rescue baby boy was born a year ago today. You have made my life 1000x better happy birfday little shark.” While the two share a special bond, the journey to today wasn’t without (expensive) complications: In August, Eilish shared that Shark left some unwanted presents in and around some pricey sneakers.
Foe Thee Frenchie (owned by Megan Thee Stallion)
Not many pets win awards, but Megan Thee Stallion’s has: Foe Thee Frenchie (who has nearly half a million Instagram followers and is coming after Trappy S. Goyard’s best-name-of-this-feature crown) was Paper‘s Celebrity Pet Of The Year for 2019. Meg recently shared a progress pic showing off how much Foe has grown over the course of five months, and understandably, in the more recent photo, Meg has a hard time carrying her increasingly large pet.
Alf (owned by Hayley Williams)
Hayley Williams’ dog Alf has been an important figure in her life and has helped her through some difficult times. She told EW, “I got Alf when he was, like, 11 weeks old. I raised him, but I feel like he raised me. I was 23 or 24 when I got him. He keeps me present because he’s present all the time: He’s so happy and very in tune with me when I’ve gone through life-altering changes or moments.”
On “Cinnamon,” from the 2020 album Petals For Armor, Williams sings, “On the walls of my home / There are signs that I’m alone / I keep on every light / Talk to my dog, he don’t mind.” She explained that lyric to Pitchfork, saying, “He was my first therapist. And he’s still my favorite therapist.” Around this time last year, she also told Apple Music’s Zane Lowe, “My dog is the reason I’m alive, because he would’ve been waiting on me to get home, no matter what. You know how little sweet little puppies sit and they wait? I couldn’t think about it.”
Georgia (owned by Tegan Quin of Tegan And Sara)
Dogs dominated Tegan And Sara’s “100x” video from 2016, and recently, Tegan got a pup of her own, named Georgia. Since then, she has documented the joys and struggles of raising a dog and there have been plenty of both. In November 2020, she tweeted, “Is there an umbrella for people who have a new puppy and have to take it out to pee 700 times a day and need both hands to pick up poo? *must cover human and dog.” While a lot of her Georgia tweets are scatological, there’s clearly a ton of love there and Georgia has essentially become Tegan’s everything. She tweeted in December, “All I dream about is my dog. She’s literally taken over every inch of my life including all dream real estate. It will make ZERO sense that she is in a dream situation, but inevitably she appears regardless. Is this normal?”
Kane Songz (owned by Trey Songz)
Trey Songz goes full method while running his dog’s Instagram account, which is presented entirely from the Frenchton’s perspective. On Father’s Day in 2018, for example, “Kane” posted a photo of him and his father playing basketball and “wrote,” “Happy Father’s day Pops!! Thanks for showing me how to break canine ankles out here in these streets!!” He even did what many others have failed to do when he saw John Cena one time.
Meredith Grey, Olivia Benson, and Benjamin Button (owned by Taylor Swift)
Yes, of course Taylor Swift is on this list. After all, Swift has proven to be perhaps the biggest cat person out there (heck, she portrayed a literal cat person in Cats). Thousands of words could be written about Swift’s cats and her love for them, so for this space, let’s just focus on Benjamin Button, the latest addition to the Swift family. Swift actually decided to adopt the cat on the set of her “Me!” video and described how that came to be, saying on Instagram Live in 2019, “[A cat handler handed me this tiny cat and he just starts purring and […] he looks at me like, ‘You’re my mom, and we’re going to live together.’ I fell in love. I looked at Brendon [Urie] and he’s like, ‘You’re going to get the cat aren’t you?’”
Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.
