Kelly Ripa, Mark Consuelos ‘Considering’ Adopting a Dog After Pet Chewie’s Death (Exclusive)

Kelly Ripa and Mark Consuelos are considering adding to their family.

Earlier this year, the co-hosts of Live with Kelly and Mark, who are also a real-life couple, mourned the loss of a longtime family member: their beloved dog, Chewie. The white and brown Shih Tzu, whom Ripa first met during an adoption segment on Live, died on Feb. 4 after her health deteriorated rapidly. She was 17.

While speaking with PEOPLE ahead of the 38th season of Live, Ripa, 54, and Consuelos, also 54, revealed that months after the Shih Tzu’s death, they are “considering” adopting another dog. The pet would join their pup Lena, a Maltese/Shih Tzu mix that Ripa adopted in 2020.

With fan-favorite Pet Week on the horizon for Live, Consuelos acknowledged that it’s “always nice” to get “pets adopted” through the show. And Ripa revealed to PEOPLE that the pair is potentially “in the market ourselves” for a rescue pet.

“We’re looking to maybe get Lena … a sibling,” she added.

Ripa acknowledged that despite thinking about adopting another pet, “We’re still not over the loss of our dog.”

“I don’t think we ever will be, frankly,” she noted. “But we definitely are considering a sibling.”

Conseulous and Ripa said they have a few factors they are considering while searching for a new pet. Size is important, as any pet the couple gets needs “to be small enough to fit in the seat in front of us” on a plane, given how much the pair travels, per Ripa.

“That’s what we’ve learned about our dogs,” she added.

Ripa and Consuelos first shared news of Chewie’s death during the Feb. 5 episode of Live with Kelly and Mark, revealing that they chose to humanely euthanize the beloved 17-year-old Shih Tzu after she “had stopped eating for a couple of days and had been eating less and less for the past few weeks.”

“She was extremely dehydrated and had some neurological stuff going down,” Consuelos said of the late pup. “And you think, ‘Okay, I’m doing the right thing, this is going to be not easy.’ It’s probably one of the toughest things we’ve had to do as a married couple.”

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“If it wasn’t for this show, we wouldn’t know Chewie,” Consuelos said elsewhere during the episode. He also added that the late dog “grew up with” the couple’s three kids: Michael, 28, Lola, 24, and Joaquin, 22.

The Riverdale alum also offered to do the “heavy lifting” during the episode as Ripa was visibly upset. “I’m really sorry. I thought I got it all out, guys,” she told the Live audience. “I really thought I got it all out, and I apologize because this is not how I wanted this to go down.”

“We’ve been so lucky,” Ripa said. “We’re very fortunate people in our lives; we’ve not had loss in our lives, a tremendous loss like this. We still have all of our parents. We’re so fortunate. I feel very bad crying in front of you when people have — there are much bigger problems in the world, and I understand that.”

“But you have to understand,” she continued, “that this dog was so special, and she was such a great girl.”