Teddi Mellencamp gets emotional as she discusses grief in the new episode of her podcast, “Teddi Tea Pod,” tearfully recounting the day her family’s dog Khaleesi died.
The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills star, 38, dedicates the upcoming Tuesday, December 10, episode of the podcast to Khaleesi and says she’s starting her discussion about grief by talking about the pup’s death, but as she tells the heartbreaking story, her sadness overwhelms her.
“Maybe it was, like, two weeks ago, my husband [Edwin Arroyave], kids [daughter Slate, 6, and son Cruz, 5] and I were heading to Orange County for my stepdaughter’s birthday party,” Mellencamp begins in the episode. “And you know, we have a dog, and we were thinking, ‘What’s the best thing for the dog? Probably not to ride in the car with us, you know, an hour and a half with traffic, try to figure out what to do with her during the party.’ You know, like, all of the things that you think about when you have a loved one.”
So Mellencamp and her family decided to take Khaleesi to a doggy day care place. “The kids and I pack her up, drop her off,” she remembers. “We see the people there, we see the other little doggies. You know, they’re not locked up in crates. It’s safe. You know, we think everything’s great.”
But the reality star’s day took a distressing turn right as she arrived at the party. “I get a hysterical phone call from the woman who owns the facility,” she says. “I can’t even make out what she’s saying, but I know it’s her phone number. I can hear that she’s saying, ‘I’m at the vet.’ So I say, ‘Can you please put the vet on?’ I talk to the vet, and they say that Khaleesi’s not breathing, she’s going to need to go on life support, and they don’t know what happened to her.”
Mellencamp, who’s pregnant with her third child with Arroyave, 42, sobs on the podcast as she describes the thoughts that went through her head in that moment: “Like, the first thing is, ‘Holy crap, we’re walking into my stepdaughter’s birthday party, and I’m about to have to fake this right now.’ Number two: Is your dog going to make it? Number three was, this is all my fault. I never should have dropped her off at this place. I should have figured something else out. Number four: What am I going to tell my kids?”
After taking a moment to collect herself, Mellencamp goes on: “So I figured out how to numb myself throughout the birthday party, waiting for vets to call, waiting for more information, trying to have the best time possible, praying and hoping that she’s going to be OK, messaging the vet, messaging the woman, trying to figure out details, I can’t get really any details.”
“Long story short: What they think happened is she either had brain or spinal injury from a fall, and she passed away,” she adds, getting choked up again.
Mellencamp asked the vet’s office if she could go in and visit Khaleesi, she says in the podcast. “They said, ‘There’s no point. You can’t touch her. You can’t talk to her. She’s … on life support. There’s nothing you can do, and she’s not responsive. She won’t hear you. She won’t know that you’re there,’” she recalls. “So then, I just had to wait. And then, at 3 in the morning, the vet called, and they said, ‘Yeah, she passed.’”
The Bravo star revealed Khaleesi’s death via Instagram on December 2. “RIP to our loving, silly and adorable doggy Khaleesi,” she wrote at the time. “Our hearts are broken as we have had to say goodbye to you way too soon. Without going too [sic] into it– we were out of town and placed Khaleesi in a place of care where an accident happened. Sometimes things happen out of your control.”
On Saturday, December 7, Mellencamp exclusively told Us that she has forgiven the doggy day care facility. “I think the biggest thing I can just do is forgiveness and try to move on from it,” she said at the time. “You know, it’s a sad, it’s a sad thing that happened, but I can’t — anger isn’t going to get me anywhere.”
