How Adoptable Pets at Concert Venues Are ‘Offering Love’ to Touring Artists & Their Crews — and Finding Homes ...Middle East

While riggers hung massive lights and construction workers assembled the stage on a grueling day before Tyler Childers‘ June 2024 concert at the United Center, three young locals showed up: Cheryl, Larry and Ted. And Cheryl gave Kyle Crownover, Childers’ tour manager, a look.

“I was like, ‘I think that’s the one,'” he tells Billboard.

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Cheryl, a small terrier-chihauhua mix who tends to “collapse in people’s arms and just look at them,” as Crownover puts it, was a delivery from Chicago’s One Tail at a Time, an animal-rescue group that admitted 1,126 dogs in 2022 and found homes for 1,066, a 97% save rate. Over the past few years, Chappell Roan, Sabrina Carpenter, Kelsea Ballerini, Ed Sheeran, Green Day, Pearl Jam, Blink-182, Maggie Rogers and many others have been beneficiaries of adorable furry deliveries to cheer up artists and crews.

“We’re usually on the road three weeks at a time, so that’s three weeks away from your family. We’re close with the crew, but, on a show day, there’s not time to go meet your friends in the city, so we’re confined to whatever spot we’re playing,” Crownover says. “To bring that in” — the puppies, and occasionally kittens — “and instantly see everyone’s mood change, it’s hard to be stressed.”

The trend of bringing adoptable pets backstage kicked in about a decade ago, when members of Slayer, Testament and Carcass posed for adorable photos in which they were cuddling with rescued animals before a Seattle show in 2016. But it took off after the pandemic. Returning to work and dealing with strict COVID-19 protocols, inflation and supply-chain issues, crews could be glum.

In some cases, artists — especially those involved in their own animal-rescue charities, such as Miranda Lambert’s Mutt Nation — request the perk in advance. In others, venue managers emphasized “taking care of crew and making sure that the backstage is more of a place where they feel welcome and more at home,” says Amy Tavares, a Nashville-based Live Nation backstage experience manager who has worked with Wags & Walks and other groups to bring in puppies, kittens, goats and pigs to arena and stadium concerts over the last few years.

“It absolutely could be therapeutic. The road can be isolating for everybody, and it makes sense to me that these animals who are offering love and connection are highlighting a deep need for that,” Lucy Kozak Cesnik, a Nashville psychotherapist who used to work as a CAA music agent, tells Billboard. “Animals can lead the way to access being seen and heard, with people who’ve had trauma in their relationships, without their defenses up. Healing can’t just happen in the therapy office.” 

Adds Marika Anthony-Shaw, a former Arcade Fire violinist who is founder and CEO of Plus1, a philanthropy group that partners with Carpenter: “You go from bus to backstage and bus to backstage, maybe a couple hotels and maybe a couple flights. There’s a sense of Groundhog Day. The mental-health benefits of interacting with animals reduces stress. There’s a mood boost.”

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Working with managers and concert venues, the local rescue groups identify three or four young animals — usually pups — who are more likely to be friendly to people because they haven’t yet learned to be scared of them, then cart them in carriers to the show. They bring playpens, food and treats, and the venues provide a backstage room and bowls of water. So far, no dogs have been reported to have escaped and roamed the stage, disrupting shows, This Is Spinal Tap-style. 

“They did not do that!” says Greta Palmer, chief communications and brand officer for Best Friends Animal Society — a Utah-based animal sanctuary with programs in New York, Los Angeles and elsewhere — which provided three puppies and three kittens at a Carpenter show last year, and six kittens as part of a “cuddle lounge” for a 2023 Kesha concert in Atlanta. “We have a bunch of staff that go, and we’ll set up an area with a gate, and people can come in and hang with them, play with them, love on them [and] ideally adopt them.” (Best Friends did not do on-site adoptions for the Kesha show, and none of the animals were adopted at the Carpenter event.)

The strategy worked for Crownover and Cheryl, whom the tour manager adopted shortly after Childers’ Chicago concert. Cheryl has been on the road with the crew ever since, meeting 100 new people a day and greeting visiting foster puppies in various cities. (Crew members on the Childers tour also adopted Larry and Ted after meeting them at the United Center.) 

“The main reason we do it is to promote the dogs and promote adoption,” says Alli Rooney, One Tail at a Time’s marketing manager. “And everyone needs a bit more lightness in the world right now.”

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The animal visits are pure good-vibes publicity too. When Motley Zoo Animal Rescue brought dogs to the 2016 Slayer-Testament-Carcass show in Seattle, the most tattooed and scowling of metal stars melted in photos with adorable puppies; when Brighter Days Dog Rescue brought dogs to Billie Eilish’s Denver show in November, the organization’s social media post showed the singer-songwriter cheek to cheek with puppies and said they were “showered with love” by the star; and Sheeran has posed with tiny backstage-delivery kittens multiple times, including in 2017, when the SPCA of Wake County surprised him before a Raleigh, N.C., show with animals rescued from a nearby horse farm. At CMA Fest’s kickoff in Nashville June 5, Wags & Walks provided adoptable puppies at an “artist oasis” area, luring country performers such as Gavin Adcock, Ashley Cooke, Meghan Patrick and Kaylee Rose.

Some venues, according to Mallory Kerlie, marketing director of Muddy Paws, a New York dog-rescue group, have restrictions on both dogs and cats, many relating to the potential for rabies or injuries. And some rules disallow pit bulls or dogs heavier than 25 pounds. “Here in New York, that’s a particular challenge,” she says. But Muddy Paws accompanies the puppies with trained staff and reliable carriers, and navigates public transportation in case parking is an issue. At the venues, she adds, “It’s a small room with doors. That’s usually the best way to keep them safe.”

Kittens are slightly easier to haul into concerts than dogs, notes Best Friends’ Palmer. She explains: “We can just set up an X-pen and they tend to stay pretty contained.”

Wags & Walks has provided puppies, kittens and even baby goats and pigs for Nashville arenas and stadiums. The non-profit animal rescue group placed the dogs in a soundproof room during Rufus Du Soul’s Ascend Amphitheater soundcheck in May (“So they wouldn’t get scared,” explains Taveras), and also surprised Kelsea Ballerini at Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles by presenting her with three small sibling puppies for a photo op.

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Neither Ballerini nor her team was available for a post-pup interview, but Lesley Brog, founder of Wags & Walks, knew the country superstar’s own dog, Dibs, was going through cancer treatment. “She’s a huge dog lover, and they thought it would make sense,” she says. 

Shortly after the puppies arrived before Ballerini’s show, Wags & Walks set them up in a conference room near the office of Cara Vanderhook, the arena’s vp of marketing and communications. The exec mentioned them in a staff chat, and within half an hour, Vanderhook tells Billboard, “I’m not joking, I probably had 30 people in the conference room playing with these puppies. It gave everybody a moment to take a breath when they needed it.”

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