Live with Kelly and Ryan 's Staff Celebrates Their Dogs While Finding Homes for Rescue Pets
Courtesy WABC
Live with Kelly and Ryan is going to the dogs!
The daytime TV show is in the midst of its "Pawfect Match Week," a series of pet-friendly segments featuring pet parenting tips and adoptable canine visitors from U.S. animal rescue organizations.
This celebration of animals is important to Live's dedicated staffers since many are dog owners, with several staff members even meeting their canine companions on the show.
Michael Gelman, Live's executive producer, adopted his pup Billie after seeing the canine on one of the show's pet adoption segments.
"I remember Billie just being so 'chill.' My daughter Jamie had just left for college, and I called my wife Laurie from the set and said, 'If we're ever going to get a dog, this is the one!' It was the perfect time for our family, and one of the best decisions we ever made," Gelman tells PEOPLE.
The producer wasn't the only one charmed by the dogs from that segment. Kelly Ripa ended up adopting Billie's sister Lena after meeting the pup on Live.
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"They have the same behaviors. The way they really stretch themselves out and lay down flat almost like a bearskin rug, both of them. They both play this zany game where they run in circles and hide under furniture. They're just very similar even though they look different," Ripa says of the pooch siblings, who still get to see each other and play together during set visits.
Like Gelman and Ripa, Live producer Ed Connolly met his two dogs, Gizmo and Yodel, when they visited the show as adoptable pets rescued from the streets of Puerto Rico by Animal Lighthouse Rescue.
"When I met them backstage, in our a green room, I instantly fell in love," Connolly says.
He and his husband adopted the brother dogs and considered the choice the "best decision we ever made!"
Courtesy of WABC
Not all Live staffers found their canines on the show, but everyone is encouraged to bring their pets to work.
"It definitely changes the mood when someone brings their dog to work," says Ryan Seacrest, a dog dad to 8-year-old Georgia.
"I always say that pets are the blood pressure cuff of the show, and as soon as anybody brings their dog into work, it just sort of lowers the blood pressure of everyone. Whatever the issue of the day is, it seems to disappear as soon as there is a dog," Ripa adds.
Courtesy of WABC
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Like with its "Pawfect Match Week," Live is always looking for ways to support pets, especially adoptable animals, on the show because the staff knows how wonderfully life-changing they can be.
"There's nothing like owning a pet. Especially as parents, we had young children, and it taught them to be responsible, compassionate, and kind. It brought them great joy, and they became very responsible," Ripa says.
