When you make a dog your “higher power,” what happens when they die?

When you make a dog your “higher power,” what happens when they die?

What can we learn from those who have battled addiction? This conversation between host A.J. Daulerio and his friend, actor and director Jeremy Luke, digs into a very specific kind of heartbreak: losing the dog that helped keep you sober. Jeremy got sober in Los Angeles after years of heavy drinking, drugs, and bar culture. Just two months into sobriety, he did what “you’re not supposed to do” and adopted Boogie, a tiny chihuahua–pug from a rescue called Barking Bitches.

That choice quietly reshaped his recovery. Boogie became his “No. 1 sidekick,” gave him a reason to come home at night, and turned him from a bar guy into a dog-park guy with a whole new community. A.J. and Jeremy talk honestly about mourning their old party selves, that gnawing emptiness in early sobriety, and how a pet’s unconditional love can slip into the space where alcohol used to sit. As A.J.

puts it, a dog can feel like a higher power—no judgement, just presence. Things get raw when Jeremy describes Boogie’s last years as a senior dog, the hands-on care, and the shock of grief when she died. He admits that losing her was the only time he truly thought, “I don’t want to be sober right now.” They link that grief to other losses—family, friends, old identities—and how a pet’s death can unlock years of buried emotion.

Yet there’s a soft landing here too. Jeremy talks about the “hole in his heart,” fostering (and probably keeping) an older German shepherd from Compton, and finding purpose again by giving a neglected dog a gentle final chapter. If a pet has ever felt like your lifeline in sobriety, this conversation might make you laugh, cry, and maybe rethink what recovery support can look like—have you ever realised just how much your animal has carried for you?