Julianne Hough Reveals Tragic Details Of How Her Dogs Died

Even years later, Julianne Hough continues to be grappling with the lack of her beloved pets Lexi, 11, and Harley, 8.

Five years later, Julianne Hough is sharing the tragic details of how they were lost.

Years after revealing the sudden lack of her two dogs, Hough has now disclosed for the primary time how they were killed.

“I had asked for a separation,” she recalled during a recent episode of “The Jamie Kern Lima Show,” referring to her divorce from Brooks Laich. “After which ten days later my dogs were killed by coyotes.”

“I woke up before my phone even rang, and I knew, and I picked up the phone, and my assistant on the time was similar to screaming,” she continued, noting that she’d “never had coyotes in her yard” before, and there have been gates. “I had two dogs that were my kids. I had them for 11 years and for eight years. They usually were all the pieces to me.”

While coyotes tragically took her pups, Hough says she is grateful for 2 things. “That they went together, I’m so grateful they went together,” she told host Jamie Kern Lima.

“Two, I’m grateful that typically the way it happens may be very quick and that we got their bodies,” the “DWTS” pro added. “But at the moment I used to be like, ‘Oh that was the unraveling of absolutely the safety of like unconditional love.’”

Lexi and Harley’s deaths occurred not only during her breakup with Brooks Laich but in addition while she was navigating a split along with her longtime assistant and launching her latest company, Kinrgy.

“I felt so out of alignment,” the skilled dancer recalled as tears fell down her cheek. “I’m about to begin this company which is all about helping people hook up with themselves and living their most expanded free self and assistant and I are breaking up, and I’m asking for a separation because something’s not working.”

She continued, “My dogs that represented unconditional love and safety are gone—I’m like, ‘What am I doing? I’m blowing up my life.’”

In 2023, Hough welcomed a brand new pup into her family, Sunny.

“Sunny, you may have brought a lot love and literal sunshine into my life,” she wrote on Instagram last summer. “I can’t remember a time without you.”

“Lexi & Harley would have loved and played with you day-after-day and I do know that they sent you to me, only once I was able to open my heart and love again,” Hough added of her latest furball. “You cracked me open sweetheart.”

Earlier this month, Hough opened up about her difficult childhood, recalling a very difficult period when she and her brother, Derek Hough, were sent overseas by their parents to live and train with dance coaches Corky and Shirley Ballas.

“My first experience was once I was about 4 years old,” she said, per Us Weekly. “[It was] a neighbor in our cul-de-sac. I’ve actually never said that out loud to someone in an interview before. That was a really confusing time, because growing up within the Mormon culture, all the pieces must be perfect.”

“And by the best way, I’m not the just one in my family that had passed through similar things,” she added. “And in order that was a really difficult thing to return to terms with, which is that no person did anything.”

“Being so young, and people being your first experiences — whether it’s physical, mental, sexual — those abuses of power to someone who’s vulnerable to it,” Hough said. “It immediately sets a precedent of: other people have the ability.”