The Pitt star Noah Wyle revealed that his family had suffered a devastating loss after the death of their chocolate Labrador, Lily.

The actor and his wife, Sara Wyle, took to Instagram to share the sad news, alongside a carousel of photos of their pooch over the years.

"Our sweet girl left us today," they wrote in the caption. "We are devastated. It was unexpected. She was our beautiful California Brown Bear, and there is/was no one like her. Hug your fur babies tight."

The photos included a snap of Sara holding Lily as a puppy on her lap, and another of Noah cuddling up to her as she lay on the grass. 

In a clip included in the carousel, Lily lay on her back with her tail wagging, as Sara said: "I just wanna be this dog in my next life."

Family, friends and fans of the couple took to the comment section to share the love, with Noah's daughter, Auden, writing: "Love you forever Lily," while his The Pitt co-star Patrick Ball added: "Oh no… I'm so sorry Sara," and actress Kaley Cuoco said: "Nothing worse on earth!"

See Noah in The Pitt below...

Noah is a father to kids Owen and Auden, whom he shares with his first wife, Tracy, and to Frances, whom he welcomed with Sara in 2015.

The family live on a ranch in California's Santa Ynez Valley, where they often take in rescue animals like pigs, chickens and even a cow.

"I needed to be geographically close to Los Angeles just for practical purposes, but I didn't want to raise my kids in Los Angeles," Noah told Cowboys & Indians magazine.

"I was raised in Los Angeles. I'm an Angeleno, and I just wanted something a little bit more rural and smaller and slower than city life for my kids…Two hours was about as far as I could drive after work on a Friday night when I was doing ER and not fall asleep at the wheel."

The 55-year-old added that they still took in the occasional rescue animal if their bleeding hearts couldn't help it. "We're not acquiring as many animals as we used to, but if I hear a good hard-luck case or a good sob story about an animal in need, I'm still a soft touch, and everybody knows it," he explained.

"And so we still have pigs and chickens, and we have a rescue steer that my sister rehabilitated…We've got horses and lots of dogs and cats. So there's a menagerie – a lot of mouths to feed. I think the burden was being named Noah."

Noah and Sara were close to giving up the ranch altogether and even put it on the market in 2020 for $6.5 million amid financial struggles, although they withdrew the listing three months later.

The ER star is passionate about humanitarian and animal rights causes, and has supported organizations like Doctors of the World, Human Rights Watch, the World Wide Fund for Nature and the Return to Freedom wild horse sanctuary.