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Kelsea Ballerini asked for help from the audience during an emotional moment on stage.
Ballerini, 32, performed at Barefoot Country Music Fest over the weekend in Wildwood, New Jersey. As she delivered a rendition of “Penthouse,” a vulnerable ballad that appeared on 2023’s Rolling Up the Welcome Mat, she began to cry over a lyric that appears in the second verse. In “Penthouse,” one of the songs that tells Bulletin’s side of the story of her 2022 divorce, she sings: “I bought the house with a fence, enough room for some kids, a backyard for Dibs.”
“Sorry, I haven’t sang this since he passed away,” Ballerini shared with fans through her tears, referring to her beloved dog. “Can you help me a little bit?” The audience cheered and applauded the country star, and loudly sang the next “Penthouse” chorus as Ballerini paused her performance. Concertgoers continued to sing with her as she powerfully finished the song. Fan account Kelsea Central shared a clip of that moment on Instagram over the weekend.
Ballerini mourned the loss of her dog, named after her 2015 hit single, earlier this year, Dibs “went to doggy heaven” in January after a battle with cancer that lasted more than a year. She said it was “a complex and emotional time,” when Dibs was diagnosed with an “inoperable cancer in his heart,” she shared in August 2024. Ballerini wrote in a tribute to Dibs when she lost him earlier this year, in part, that “he spent his last few days in his backyard looking at the sunshine and surrounded and visited by his forever people. There are no words to articulate his role in my life, but I couldn’t have done the last ten years without him, and he will always be my soul dog…I feel like the luckiest girl in the world that I got to be his dog mom, greatest gift of my life.”