Neil Patrick Harris has been left devastated by the sudden death of his dog.
Neil Patrick Harris devastated by sudden death of dog
The 51-year-old actor was on holiday with his husband David Burtka while their twins Harper Grace and Gideon Scott, 13, were at camp when their close family friend Michael – who was dog sitting golden retriever Ella – called to tell them about her sudden death.
Writing in his newsletter Wondercade, Neil said: “The morning after we arrived, my calm and carefree slumber was interrupted by my phone buzzing on the nightstand. It was Michael, our closest friend/practical family member who was looking after our dogs at our house on Long Island, the aptly named Funhouse Farm. It was unusual for him to call so early, and I groggily answered. ‘Ella is dead.’
“He sounded quiet, stoic. ‘I found her in the front yard, lying in the grass. It seems like a tree branch had somehow gotten caught in her collar, and in trying to get it free, she rolled around on the ground and it wrapped around her neck.’ His voice was breaking now, fighting for breath or understanding. ‘She must have choked or been strangled or something. Part of the branch is stuck in her mouth. But she’s dead. Ella’s dead.’ He couldn’t go on.”
Ella joined the family in 2000 and Neil admitted he has no idea how they will cope with her death.
He wrote: “Now she’s dead. And I don’t know how to handle it. I don’t know how to make space for it. The logical side of my brain is fighting with the emotional side: it’s coping by quickly thinking about next steps and trying to untangle what happened through logic, while simultaneously wanting to collapse and wail and sob uncontrollably. I want more details, but at the same time, not. I want to process it like an escape room, to gather all the data so that I can find a solution and open the door and leave, but I’m simultaneously reeling and overwhelmed with a sadness and guttural pain that almost makes me wretch. My grief is pulling me in opposite directions — my fingers are shaking and I’m crying as I type this — and while I’m trying to honor both sides, my brain is so messy and jumbled…I’m at a loss. It’s a massive loss.
“She was barely four years old. She was absolutely brimming with life. We’ve had dogs die before, but they were old and blind and incontinent, so for them it was only a matter of time. Sad, yes, but inevitable. But Ella was so young.
“And now she’s gone. Just like that. It was the freakest of accidents. Self-strangulation? By a felled tree branch?? I’ve never heard of anything like it before in my life. Ella freely and confidently roamed the property every day — as do all our dogs. They’re farm dogs. So how could it happen? Why did it happen? If I were home, could I have stopped it from happening? Pointless questions, I guess. It just…happened. Sometimes things just happen. And I guess the work now is to process it as authentically and effectively as possible. And then, somehow, move on. There’s no other option, really — to somehow try and make sense of it, well, makes no sense. It’s senseless.”
