Derek Hough spent $8K on his cat’s Christmas Day health scare
Derek Hough revealed that his cat Otis had a health problem on Christmas Day that ultimately cost $8,000 to resolve.
The 39-year-old Dancing With The Stars judge, who used to be one of the competing professional dancers on the show, announced the news on Instagram.
Still dressed in his holiday pajamas, Derek posed with both Otis and a plastic bag from the veterinary laboratory Antech Diagonistics in his hands.
He added an animation of a circular arrow pointing to the bag, linked to the number: “$8,000,” which represents the cost of the treatment.
“Look what I got for Christmas,” he wrote. “A plastic bag filled with stuff that Otis had eaten and had to be removed from his stomach cost $8,000! Yes! I’m glad he’s doing well.’
Fans and friends flocked to his comments, including Dancing With The Stars pro Maksim Chmerkovskiy, who wrote: ‘Nooooo!!!! Glad he’s doing well!!’
Derek Hough revealed that his cat Otis had a health problem on Christmas Day that ended up costing $8,000 to resolve
English dancer Shirley Ballas, whose son Mark Ballas was a former Dancing With The Stars professional, also wrote: ‘Omg seriously. I hope the cat feels better.’
Derek shares at least four other pets with his wife Hayley Erbert, another Dancing With The Stars pro: dogs Romi and Luna, and cats Palo and Lily.
“It’s becoming a real problem,” he joked People in 2021. ‘I’m going to try to find a picture, and it’s just cat, cat, dog, dog, more cat, dog.’
Julianne Hough’s brother was also able to enjoy a lighter moment with Hayley over Christmas, as seen on Instagram.
Derek and Hayley bought a Christmas-themed ‘twinsie’ – a set of attached Christmas onesies – and tried them on.
‘We are now literally stuck together. Poor @hayley.erbert,” Derek wrote in the caption of a video of him and Hayley modeling the twins, giggling and joking.
At one point, the professional dancers tried to match a piece of choreography to the song We Go Together from Grease, but they always burst out laughing.
Their Merry Christmas comes a year after Hayley had to undergo emergency surgery to remove part of her skull after suffering a brain hematoma.
Julianne Hough’s brother was also able to enjoy a lighter moment with his wife Hayley Erbert over Christmas, as seen on Instagram
Derek is pictured performing alongside Hayley at a concert on his Dance For The Holidays tour at Fontainebleau Las Vegas last week
On an episode of Dancing With The Stars last week, Derek tearfully told the story of the harrowing day he feared he would lose his wife.
“I was on stage and she would come out,” he recalled. “The director walked out and just said, ‘Hey, she’s not coming on stage.’ She was standing on the side of the stage and was having full-blown seizures and was essentially dying. It’s very hard to even put it into words, other than pure fear.”
“We rush her to the hospital, she’s still wearing her costume, and the doctor came to me and said, ‘She has a serious brain hemorrhage, so we have to operate now.’
Derek heartbreakingly revealed: ‘He said she might not make it and that even if she did, she wouldn’t be the same person.’
When Hayley woke up she had no memory of her attacks, Derek explained, saying: ‘She says, ‘What happened? Weren’t we just dancing?’
He shared, “I can’t even tell you, just knowing that she was there, that she was in there, the relief I felt. She was Hayley. She was my wife. And then the journey began.’
The doctor told her she might never walk again, but Hayley, who described herself as ‘stubborn’, was determined not only to walk but also to dance.
She ‘pushed herself to the limit’ in pursuit of her goal and made her grand return to Dancing With The Stars this year in an emotional performance with her husband.