Entertainment gossip and news from Newsweek’s network of contributors
Kelly Ripa and Mark Consuelos first met and fell in love with their beloved rescue dog, Chewie, on their long-running ABC talk show — and now, the couple are mourning his death with viewers.
On Wednesday, February 5, a teary Ripa shared that a vet had come to her family’s New York City home to put the 17-year-old Shih Tzu to sleep.
“We had to say goodbye to Chewie yesterday,” Consuelos, 53, said of the “rough” farewell.
“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,” he explained. “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.”
Stephen J. Cohen/Getty Images
Consuelos noted that “pet owners at home can understand” the sadness he, Ripa, 54, and their family faced. “It takes a pet owner to understand this kind of loss. It’s grief. It really is grief,” he said. “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.”
He added, “If it wasn’t for this show, we wouldn’t know Chewie. She grew up with our kids.”
A teary Ripa said she was sorry to the show’s audience after Consuelos tried to reassure that he would “do the heavy lifting” and talk about the dog’s death since she was “taking it hard.”
Ripa explained: “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.”
Calling Chewie the family’s “steadfast companion,” the talk show host recalled how the pet was there for many milestones, including when each of her and Consuelo’s children — daughter Lola, 23, and sons Michael, 27, and Joaquin, 21—left for college and moved out to be on their own.
Ripa also explained that before Chewie was put down, she and her family had not had “tremendous loss like this” in their lives.
“We still have all of our parents. We’re so fortunate,” she said. “I feel very bad crying in front of you when people have — there are much bigger problems in the world, and I understand that,” she noted, adding, “But you have to understand that this dog was so special, and she was such a great girl.”
Ripa ended the emotional conversation with a touch of levity.
“She never let us kiss her face, she was very precious about her face. She was not that dog,” she said. “And after she passed away last night, I kissed her 1,000 times on her face. I kissed her nose; I’d never kissed her nose before.”
“I know that she was like somewhere in dog heaven, pissed off,” Ripa laughed. “But I didn’t care because it just was so nice to have that.”
The couple still have one dog, Lena—a Maltese/Shih Tzu they adopted over four years ago.
