Lady Gaga had plenty to celebrate Sunday night after collecting two Critics’ Choice Awards for her work on Bradley Cooper’s A Star is Born,
but the pop icon reportedly skipped post-ceremony festivities to bid her beloved pet horse goodbye.
The 32-year-old shared an Instagram post shortly after the awards show revealing that her Arabian mare Arabella — gifted to her by her label, Interscope Records, in 2015 — was dying and required her immediate attention.
“I am rushing to her now to say goodbye,” the Enigma headliner wrote in the caption alongside a photo (from a Vanity Fair Italy shoot) of her riding the horse on the coast of Malibu. “Her name means ‘yield to prayer.’ She is and was a beautiful horse.”
Gaga’s relationship with the animal was lightly covered in the 2017 Netflix documentary Gaga: Five Foot Two, as was the singer-songwriter’s bout with chronic pain and fibromyalgia — which she seemingly indicated Arabella helped her through.
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“Our souls and spirits were one. When she was in pain, so was I,” Gaga’s post continued. “I will never forget the moments we shared. Long hikes together, galloping through the canyons. Feeding her cookies. She will forever be a part of me.”
Gaga closed her message with a reference to lyrics included in the title track from her 2016 album Joanne, which was inspired by the death of her aunt (her father’s sister and the Grammy-nominated album’s namesake).
“I am so very sad, but I wish for your pain to end, and the gates of heaven to open for you,” she finished. “I love you. Girl, where do you think you’re goin?”
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Gaga previously revealed her intense connection to her horses in an August 2017 interview with V Magazine.
“I guess, when I moved to California, the sunlight was really good for me — I was happy. The sunshine helped to keep an optimism in my music. And while out there, I developed a special connection to horses,” Gaga told the publication. “I had never taken a horse-riding lesson. I literally did not know how to ride a horse. But I just grabbed her by the mane and rode her bareback…. She’s so well-trained that when I was about to fall off her, she stepped to the side to collect me.”
