Angie Harmon.Photo:Paul Archuleta/WireImage; Angie Harmon/Instagram

Angie Harmon and her dogs

Paul Archuleta/WireImage; Angie Harmon/Instagram

Angie Harmonmay have an advantage over other dog moms in comforting her pets while she’s away.

“When we have to leave the house, my daughters will turn onRizzoli & Islesso the dogs think I’m still in the house,” Harmon, 51, tells PEOPLE of her detective drama series, which ran from 2010 to 2016 on TNT and still streams today.

“Finley does that all the time,” the mom of three adds of her 20-year-old. “My oldest would be like, ‘Well, mom, I just felt bad for them. So I just turned onRizzoli & Isles,and they all just fell asleep in the living room’ — and the cats come downstairs, and everybody comes down the stairs and sits on the couch.”

One of Harmon’s cats is named Hazel after the star’s recent role inBuried in Barstow.

Angie Harmon gets cozy with on of her three dogs.Angie Harmon/Instagram

Angie Harmon and her dogs

Angie Harmon/Instagram

TheLaw & Orderalum adores all her animals, including her pet squirrel, who are all rescues.

“So my big guy, he’s like a Great Dane and a Catahoula, and my middle guy is a German shepherd slash beagle. And then the little one is a Chug, and she’s like a Chihuahua body with a pug head,” Harmon says of her smallest pup, noting that she calls her “Chug Life” and that she definitely “runs the roost.”

“I mean, she’s the tiniest thing and literally just puts everybody in their place,” she adds.

Angie Harmon’s dogs

Even smaller than Harmon’s “Chug Life” pup is the actress' 3-month-old squirrel named Thomas.

“So my youngest daughter found him on the sidewalk, and there was no tree to put him on,” Harmon says of how her daughter Emery, 14, helped her become a squirrel mom.

Harmon, who also has a third daughter named Avery, 18, says she told Emery to “go find the nearest tree, put them under it,” and wait for the mother to return.

Unfortunately, the mother squirrel never return area where Emery found the newborn rodent.

“So, I was like, ‘Okay, I’ll come get him,'” Harmon says. “And then I’ve had him ever since.”

Carrie Frank

Angie Harmon Recalls Rescuing Her Pet Squirrel as a Newborn

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When Thomas finally opened his eyes one month later, “The first thing he saw was me,” the Texas native describes of her bonding moment with the animal, whom she plans to release back into the wild “when he’s ready.”

source: people.com