Julianne Hough is opening up about the loss of her two beloved Cavalier King Charles Spaniels.
The Dancing with the Stars talent, 36, first revealed that her dogs Lexi and Harley — who she had for 11 and eight years respectively — died suddenly in 2019.
However, it wasn’t until she appeared on The Jamie Kern Lima Show on Tuesday, Aug. 27, that she shared how the canines died.
The television star told Lima she learned of the loss when she got a call: “I woke up before my phone even rang and I knew, and I picked up the phone and my assistant at the time was just, like, screaming.”
The Jamie Kern Lima Show
Hough said before Lexi and Harley’s deaths, she “never had coyotes in her yard,” and even had a fence.
During the podcast, Hough said the loss came at a particularly rough time in her life as she was not only dealing with the “unraveling” of her eight-year friendship with her longtime assistant while launching a new company, Kinrgy — but she was also going through a separation from her now-former husband Brooks Laich.
“I had asked for a separation,” she recalled. “And then 10 days later my dogs were killed by coyotes.”
Hough paused for a moment, noting she was becoming “so emotional.”
“I felt so out of integrity or out of like, alignment,” the dancer said of experiencing multiple losses while launching her business. “My dogs that represented unconditional love and safety — gone.”
But there was one silver lining that gave her a bit of solace.
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“They went together, I’m so grateful they went together,” she said. “Two, I’m grateful that usually how it happens is very quick and that we got their bodies. But at that time I was like, ‘Oh that was the unraveling of the absolute safety of like unconditional love.’”
At the time of their deaths, Hough paid tribute to her pups on Instagram and wrote, “Thank you for the timeless memories. Thank you for your magic. Thank you for being the most consistent and constant beings in my life. Thank you for being you. Thank you for being my guardians on this earth and even more so now.”
Over the summer, the America’s Got Talent judge revealed she became a dog mom once again.
Julianne Hough/instagram
“Sunny, you have brought so much love and literal sunshine in to my life ??I can’t remember a time without you,” she captioned a sweet Instagram reel showing a montage of moments with the new canine.
“Lexi & Harley would have loved and played with you everyday and I know that they sent you to me, only when I was ready to open my heart and love again – you cracked me open sweetheart,” she continued.
Hough concluded the July 6 post by wishing Sunny a happy first birthday.
