Actor Neil Patrick Harris has lost one of his beloved family dogs. The How I Met Your Mother star mourned the death of his golden retriever, Ella.
The actor opened up about the “terrible” loss in his newsletter. Neil informed readers that while the newsletter typically avoids heavy-hearted content, he simply wasn’t sure how to process his grief other than by sharing, reports a magazine.
“Something terrible happened,” the actor wrote. He explained that “late last week,” he and his husband, David Burtka, were vacationing in New Hampshire while their 13-year-old twins, Harper and Gideon, were away at a summer camp.
Michael, a close friend, was watching the family’s four dogs. Neil shared that he received an early morning phone call from Michael during his trip with the gut-wrenching words, “Ella is dead.”
He was then told that the four-year-old golden retriever died in a freak accident involving a tree branch. “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,” the family friend said.
“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.”
Neil recalled how the canine got her name. Eleanor Menopee Burtka-Harris, better known as Ella, was named after Burtka’s maternal grandmother, Eleanor Zajas. Her middle name was chosen by Neil's father.