John Mayer Mourns Loss of Dog Moose, 14, Who Was Featured on His Album Cover

John Mayer is mourning the loss of his dog, Moose.

The musician revealed his 14-year-old black lab had died on Thursday, Dec. 4 in a moving Instagram post.

“We said goodbye to Moose yesterday,” Mayer, 48, wrote on Friday, Dec. 5, captioning a carousel of photos featuring his dog as a puppy through to his later years with a graying face, often playing at their home in Montana.

“He came into my life when I needed pure love, and that’s what he gave me for 14 years. We traded on that love, as well as something else I now realize was important: routine. For a guy like me who left home at 19 and had never lived the same day twice, our routine brought real comfort and stability. When dinner is always at 8, and the afternoon walks are at 4:30, those kinds of things can heal your heart. And they did, time and time again.”

The guitarist continued, “Today my heart is so heavy and sore, but there’s more love in my life than there has ever been, and that’s because Moose helped lead me to it. It can’t be long before I unearth an old tennis ball – there must be a hundred out there under sticks and brush that were too hard to fish out – and when I do, I’ll give it a toss, and think about the dog I had when I was becoming a man, and how he was such a good dog, and that there isn’t ever enough time. But there’s enough love. There’s more than enough.”

In his younger years, Moose appeared alongside Mayer on the cover of 2013’s Paradise Valley, his sixth album, but once the musician — who adopted the pup while he was recovering from granuloma surgeries and on months of vocal rest — returned to the road, he found Moose did not like life on tour.

“I was like, okay, taking my dog on the road. Dog hates music. Hates music. He thinks it’s thunder. So he’s trembling in the dressing room,” Mayer told Bobby Bones in a 2017 interview. “First night … Red Rocks was the first place we were like, ‘Okay well I got a dog — let’s do this.’ Cowering in the corner.”

Moose wasn’t much of a fan of Mayer’s guitar work, either, and not afraid to let him know.

“When he’s home with me, if I pick up a guitar, plug it in and start playing, he does the funniest thing,” the musician told Bones, laughing. “He doesn’t want to offend me. He slowly slinks his two front paws off the couch and just waddles out of the room.”

However, it seemed Moose didn’t mind a keyboard — especially when there was room left on Mayer’s lap.

Moose was 14.