Celeb Pawrents
‘I’ll never be ready for a goodbye’: Actress Julie Tan knows time with her 19-year-old dog is limited
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Actress Julie Tan and her dogs, Tinkerbell (left), a 19-year-old silver toy poodle, and Waffles (right), a 10-year-old beige maltipoo.
PHOTO: COURTESY OF JULIE TAN
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SINGAPORE – At 19, Tinkerbell is far beyond the age most dogs live to see.
The silver-coloured toy poodle is blind, battling ovarian cancer and has an open tumour that needs daily cleaning.
When local actress Julie Tan talks about her beloved pet, she sheds tears. They are not tears of sadness or regret, but tears reserved for a soulmate you know you will one day lose, and will never be ready to let go of.
Tinkerbell has been on medication since she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 2020. The cancer was discovered late, after a lifetime of relatively robust health.
The Mister Flower (2020) actress and her mother, a retiree, 60, made the difficult decision to spay her only when she was around nine – a choice Tan now sometimes questions.
“Before that, she was perfectly fine,” Tan, 33, tells The Straits Times over Zoom. She acknowledges that vets and other pawrents say spaying helps prevent health problems. “But in my case, Tinkerbell had more health issues, especially after the spay.”
By the time the tumour showed, surgery was no longer something Tan wanted to put her tiny senior dog through.
Instead, she committed to intensive home care: medication, wound cleaning and diapers to protect the tumour.
The cancer scare came to a head in December 2025, when Tinkerbell had severe diarrhoea and the vet gently hinted it “might not be too good”.
“I told the vet I would like to keep Tinkerbell as long as I can. I will know when the time is up, but right now, it’s still not the time,” Tan says.
“Her blood test came back great. Apart from the whole tumour, cancer part, she’s eating and sleeping well. I remember the vet telling me that whatever we’re doing for Tinkerbell, continue doing it.”
That “whatever” is a full-time operation. Tan’s mum, who shuttles between Penang and Singapore, and a trusted helper of six years help with everything from medication to meals.
Tinkerbell is given her medication and supplements – including a stem cell product Tan’s mum swears by – every morning. At night, there is wound care with saline and gentle solutions that do not sting.
Tinkerbell is a 19-year-old toy poodle who is blind and battling ovarian cancer.
PHOTO: JULIE TAN
Giving her medication requires a two-person choreography.
“She’s not the easiest when it comes to medication,” says the actress, known for local films like That Girl In Pinafore (2013) and Wonder Boy (2017).
“Most of the time, my helper and I need to feed her together. I’ll need to hold her mouth, then I need to stick the medication in. Some days, she will hide the medication at the side of her mouth. When we release her, she’ll walk away and, when she thinks you can’t see her, she’ll spit out the meds.”
Tinkerbell started going partially blind in 2024 and was completely blind a year later. Even without sight, the dog navigates the home confidently, heading to her pee tray or stationing herself in the kitchen at breakfast time.
Tan reads her condition in tiny details: the firmness and colour of her poop, how eagerly she walks to the kitchen, whether she is still excited for her beloved snow pears and oranges.
“She eats everything. For her age, she still eats really, really well,” Tan says, adding that Tinkerbell has a good life.
Lessons about unconditional love
If the days are filled with routines, they are also thick with memories.
Tan has lived almost her entire adult life with Tinkerbell and Waffles, her 10-year-old extroverted maltipoo. The two dogs have seen her through mental health struggles, heartbreaks and the turbulent years of her early career.
Tan has openly shared about her mental health challenges broke up with content creator Douglas Tan
“They have gone through all my low times. When I’m feeling down, Tinkerbell will just sit beside me. Sometimes, she’ll put her head on my lap,” Tan says.
“When Waffles sees me cry, he will kind of try to lick my tears away.” That simple act of erasing her tears is what comforts Tan most.
“I miss their presence and companionship most when I’m not with them,” says Tan, her voice breaking. “We don’t speak the same language, yet we get to sense each other in this unique way. I think it’s so beautiful to be able to experience all this with my dogs.”
Waffles is a male 10-year-old maltipoo who senses Julie Tan's moods well.
PHOTO: JULIE TAN
Through them, she says, she learnt what unconditional love is like.
“Humans’ love is so conditional, right? You do something so that people will love you. But with my fur kids, you may be out busy and all, but when you reach home, they will always look at you like you’re the best thing that happened to them.”
She adds: “What I learnt from my pets is how to love without wanting to take anything. If I take away the expectations of others, it makes my life so much happier.”
Rehearsal for motherhood
Being a pawrent has taught Tan what it means to be responsible for another life. From the discipline of cooking fresh food to monitoring their health to structuring her days around walks and monthly vet visits – all of that, Tan believes, is training her for something bigger.
“Through having Tinkerbell and Waffles, it made me realise the commitment and responsibility of being a pet parent,” says Tan.
She adds: “It also made me realise that in order to be a mother one day, I would need that patience, dedication, sense of discipline and responsibility.”
Actress Julie Tan’s dogs, Tinkerbell (left) and Waffles.
PHOTO: JULIE TAN
Her dogs are, in a way, her rehearsal for motherhood – physical, emotional and spiritual.
“I made a decision recently that by 36, if there is no partner, I will have a kid on my own,” she says. She has already frozen her eggs.
Preparing for the inevitable
Her focus now is on giving Tinkerbell the gentlest, happiest twilight possible: fresh beef and vegetables, favourite citrus fruit, dresses filling an entire wardrobe and short walks where younger dogs in the park seem to bow in respect to the frail senior.
Tan knows the farewell is coming, but she is no longer obsessed with bracing herself for the moment. Instead, she is leaning fully into the days they still have.
Having played a cancer patient in local movie Good Goodbye (2024), Tan has learnt that it will be difficult when the time comes.
“As much as we prepare for a goodbye, we will never be ready for it,” she says.
“So, I treasure every single day with her. If my dogs’ purpose is to teach me how to love, then for the rest of my life, I better live up to that – that’s how I’m going to honour them.”
