Kelly Ripa breaks down in tears during Live over waning health of ‘fourth kid’

© ABC

Before the talk show’s segment on how to care for senior pets, Kelly opened up about the emotional options available for Chewie’s treatment. Discussing her dog’s waning physical condition, Kelly said to her husband: “There are people that are like, ‘You’ll know when the time is right,’ but there’s also the other group saying, ‘You don’t really know when the right time is.’ You just have to hope for the best and there really is not a wrong time when your dog has lived a full life and a great life and you start to see the quality of life diminish.”

The ABC host appeared distressed as she started to cry while sharing that Chewie is “the best dog”. Kelly went on to reveal how the couple found the pooch and even called Chewie her “fourth kid”.

“She came to us at a time when we had three young kids. I always say she was my fourth kid, but I still treated her like a dog. Now I’m questioning, was I nice enough to her when she was a puppy? Because I had kids and I was trying to raise these kids,” explained Kelly.

She added: “It’s been really difficult. She’s an old broad, I’m an old broad, and she’s like, ‘You first!’ The two of us are like, rattling around the house looking at each other.”

The mother-of-three acknowledged how she is aware that “there are real problems in the world”, but she feels emotional all the same as she “loves this dog so much”. Kelly admitted that once her children flew the nest for college she really got to know Chewie.

“I feel like my time with her, as long as it was, was still too short,” she said.

Kelly’s empty nest

The couple’s son Joaquin is currently studying theatre at the University of Michigan. When Joaquin first went off to college, the anchor alum said on Live: “We became empty nesters. We took our youngest son to college, we dropped him off.

“It was hard. It was really hard. We dropped him off at school and we gave him a hug — it was actually brutally painful. And I said, ‘I did not realize that 18 years would go so fast’.”

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Earlier in the week, the 54-year-old shared that Chewie suffered an accident after she fell in the couple’s $27 million New York home. The show’s producer, Michael Gelman, weighed in on the discussion, saying: “It’s more of deciding when the end is for your pet.”

Mark and his wife also own another dog, a four-year-old pooch named Lena.