We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Mirah Horowitz a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Mirah, we’re thrilled to have you on our platform and we think there is so much folks can learn from you and your story. Something that matters deeply to us is living a life and leading a career filled with purpose and so let’s start by chatting about how you found your purpose.
I didn’t so much find my purpose as it found me. I always wanted to have a career as a public servant. I grew up the child of a Hill staffer, visiting the Senate while the Congress was in recess. Answering phones in my best grown up voice. Having “power lunches” at the Monocle with my dad. So, after graduating from law school and deciding a career practicing law was not for me, I took a job on the Hill.
Looking for ways to meet people outside of work, I ended up adopting my first dog, Sparky. Because the Senate is pet-friendly, he came to work with me on Mondays and Fridays, sitting patiently under my desk while I worked and respecting my “fence” of waste paper baskets to keep him in my corner of the office I shared with 4 other staffers.
Learning Sparky’s story — he had been in foster care with a lovely family before I adopted him — inspired me to want to volunteer with an animal rescue. My type-A personality kicked in, and I didn’t want to just volunteer. I wanted to make the organization better. Fast forward 2 years and I was starting my own animal rescue.
While saving animals was my primary goal when I founded Lucky Dog with a group of volunteers, my purpose has become much bigger. I want to help people through the adoption of pets. The unconditional love that rescue dogs and cats provide is life-changing — even life-saving. And, the purpose that other people find in volunteering and working for Lucky Dog is icing on the cake.
Never in my life did I think I would be running an animal welfare organization as my full time job — my life’s purpose. But then Sparky found me. And the rest is history,
Thanks, so before we move on maybe you can share a bit more about yourself?
Lucky Dog Animal Rescue is a volunteer-powered nonprofit that operates in Northern Virginia and Florence County, South Carolina. Our mission is to save dogs and cats from high kill shelters across the rural south and as far away as Puerto Rico and Hawaii, but we are so much more that that. We support pet owners to prevent them from surrendering animals to the shelter in the first place. We provide low cost veterinary care in South Carolina where we have a veterinary clinic and rescue campus. In Northern Virginia, we facilitate more than 2000 adoptions annually without any facility of our own! All our animals live with volunteer foster parents or boarding partners until they find their forever families.
What makes Lucky Dog so special is our volunteers. We have very few staff, but an army of supporters who put in hundreds of hours of work each week to make our life-changing work possible. The only limitation we face in terms of our ability to save animals is the number of volunteers we have.
We are super excited about Phase II of our South Carolina Rescue Campus. This will include a building dedicated to treating dogs with deadly heartworm disease and to providing affordable boarding to residents in the Florence County area as well as a cat building to provide a safe space for rescue cats to wait until they can come to Northern Virginia.
There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?
I think keeping an open mind is essential. You may have a road map for your life or your career, but being open to what comes to you will get you where you are meant to be. Secondly, be willing to put in the work. My team works extremely hard, but I never ask them to do something that I haven’t done myself or am unwilling to do. You have to set the example. And finally, ask for help and take it when you can get it. I could never have started Lucky Dog alone. It would never be the organization it is today if I wasn’t willing to ask for help. It can be hard for so many reasons to admit you need advice or you have gotten yourself into a situation you can’t get out of. But, I guarantee, someone else has been there and done that — and they can help you.
Okay, so before we go we always love to ask if you are looking for folks to partner or collaborate with?
We are looking to expand our Rescue Campus and are in the process of raising funds to save even more dogs and cats in need. We’ve never taken on this kind of Capital Project before and we’d love help, advice, etc!
Contact Info:
- Website: www.luckydoganimalrescue.org
- Instagram: dcluckydog
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/luckydoganimalrescue.org
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/lucky-dog-animal-rescue/
- Twitter: dcluckydog
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/user/luckydoganimalrescue
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/lucky-dog-animal-rescue-arlington
Image Credits
Jeanne Taylor Photography Mirah Horowitz
