Last month, Kelly Ripa and Mark Consuelos opened up on their talk show about the difficult decision of euthanasia for their 17-year-old dog Chewie. Now they’ve had to face the unavoidable moment, with Chewie, a rescued Maltese, passing away several days ago.
On a recent episode of Live with Kelly and Mark, Kelly was clearly too emotional to talk – So her husband Mark started with “We had a rough day yesterday. We had to say goodbye to Chewie yesterday,” with the couple opting to have a vet visit them for in-home humane euthanasia. He continued saying, “Chewie had stopped eating for a couple of days and had been eating less and less for the past few weeks. She was extremely dehydrated and had some neurological stuff going down and you think, ‘Okay, I’m doing the right thing, this is going to be not easy but…’ It’s probably one of the toughest things we’ve had to do as a married couple. I know pet owners at home can understand this. It takes a pet owner to understand this kind of loss. It’s grief. It really is grief. But knowing that we did the right thing because it was just going to be really, really, really bad over the next few days for her.”
Ripa then opened up while wiping away tears, “I’m really sorry. I thought I got it all out, guys. I really thought I got it all out and I apologize because this is not how I wanted this to go down. We’ve been so lucky. We’re very fortunate people in our lives; we’ve not had loss in our lives, a tremendous loss like this. We still have all of our parents. We’re so fortunate. I feel very bad crying in front of you when people have – there are much bigger problems in the world, and I understand that. But you have to understand that this dog was so special, and she was such a great girl.”
With Ripa’s emotions and apology both normal for someone experiencing grief – Countless fans offered condolences and support for her opening sharing it. And many also expressed that their shouldn’t be a stigma attached to grieving and how Ripa or anyone does not owe an apology for it. A great example is @thejullpagano’s comment on the Instagram Reel below.
Lola Consuelos, one of Kelly and Mark’s three kids, also commented on the Reel. With Lola 23 and Chewie almost 18, the pup has been part of her entire life essentially.
If you missed it, you can see the previous article on Kelly and Mark discussing elderly dog euthanasia.