Neil Patrick mourns the loss his beloved dog Ella after tragic “freak accident”
A post shared by Neil Patrick Harris (@nph)The friend found Ella, “in the front yard, lying in the grass” after “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.”Harris and husband David Burtka acquired Ella in 2020 as a Christmas gift for their twins, Gideon and Harper (now aged 13). “Ella is, was, our golden retriever,” wrote the actor.“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. She lived to play. … She never stopped smiling. 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,” he continued.“Ella freely and confidently roamed the property every day — as do all our dogs.
