Katherine Heigl Launches Pet Program In Honor Of Late Brother

On the 24th anniversary of her brother, Jason Heigl’s, death Katherine Heigl and her family took a moment to honor their late loved one by launching a new initiative aimed at helping out the problems with the exploding pet population.

“I said to my mother, ‘I think it’s a really grace-filled way to honor him,’” Katherine told Access Hollywood at the Jason Debus Heigl Foundation press conference in LA, where she and mother Nancy addressed the media, with their plans to address the pet population crisis. “My mother began the foundation in his name as a way of creating a legacy for this child of hers that didn’t live long enough to do that himself and he also happened to be a real advocate for animals and children and the repressed so it works out kind of beautifully.”

The star of the upcoming film, “Life as We Know It,” who is known for her tireless work for animals, work that includes making lengthy car trips to drive abandoned animals to no-kill shelters, said having the event on such an emotional day for her family makes dealing with their loss a little easier.

“It’ll never change how this day feels to us come September 23 every year, but it can change a little bit the course of — it has a significance now… of beauty — a grace to it, that we are grateful for,” she explained.

On hand at the event was Katherine’s beautiful daughter, Naleigh, who she has been sharing her big love of animals with.

“Mostly they just lick her face,” Katherine said of the attention her own dogs give the tot. “The bigger ones she doesn’t like because they lick her too much and she can’t like get away from them.”

Katherine explained that her daughter, who she adopted last year from Korea, is still learning how to play nice with her four-legged friends.

“My thing with her is you don’t ever want to get aggressive towards the animals; she’s in a hitting phase — like, she’ll take wooden spoons and hit me with them, or hit whoever, hit a dog — and we’re really trying to teach her, ‘No! That’s not acceptable. You can’t hit the dogs, ‘cause that’s when something bad will happen, that’s when they react,” Katherine said of their growing pains. “So we’re teaching her you know, ‘Gentle pets, nice dog, good boy’ and she’s really great about it.”