Today we’d like to introduce you to Heather Crowe.
Hi Heather, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
I graduated from Columbia College of Chicago with a BFA in art + design and a minor in photography. I moved to Los Angeles 8 years ago from San Francisco for a guy, and luckily, we’re still together. At that time, I had LA at my fingertips and decided to start a high-end, handmade home decor company called Charlie Bax (@charliebaxllc). I created homewares such as candles, candlestick holders, tea light votives, and copper and cow femur bone dinner sets. I found it a very niche market and one of the most creative periods of my life. I was more involved in creating than selling, and ultimately after two years in the red in the green, I made the difficult decision to dissolve the company.
I started volunteering in the rescue community in Los Angeles. While also working on marketing for my boyfriend (now fiancé, Bryan) cannabis cultivation company called the HIT Habitat. We vacationed in the Bahamas in April of 2018, bringing back to LA a Potcake (what they call dogs in the Caribbean) named Kesa, who needed a furever home. I looked at Bryan and said, “I think we can do this; I think we can help one dog at a time!” I couldn’t believe how easy it was to adopt a dog in LA. I Shih Tzu not; I honestly thought starting a rescue would be a side hobby.
I quickly realized rescuing Potcakes from the Bahamas to bring back to LA was not going to happen as seamlessly as I thought it would, and that’s when my focus pivoted to rescue in LA. Bryan was on board for starting a nonprofit adjacent to the HIT Habitat called the HIT Living Foundation. The HIT in HIT Living is an acronym for honesty, integrity, and trust and quickly became my full-time job.
In 2018, two out of the four dogs I rescued ended up passing away due to cancer and surgery complications. It was an excellent start to my rescue endeavor. Hey, new rescue over here, we have a 50% survival rate (kidding)! In 2019, the survival rate increased, thank dog. Our team grew from the trio that was my mom, sister, and me to five. We adopted out sixty dogs in 2019, and it was one of the most significant accomplishments of my life.
Then covid hit, and the pandemic that changed the world catapulted HIT Living into another level of rescue none of us anticipated. Our team of five grew to a team of twenty-six. We adopted out two hundred and forty-seven dogs and rescued over three hundred. Our foster roster grew from three to one hundred. We have adopted out five hundred and fifty-nine dogs taking in owner surrenders, pulling behavioral and extreme medical cases from high kill shelters like county and Devore, and taking in dogs from Mexico, Iran, and the Bahamas.
HIT Living’s international team has fixed over three hundred and fifty cats, dogs, and even a raccoon in three years. My cousin, an ICU nurse, based in Milwaukee, and I visit the Bahamas twice a year, work with a Bahamian vet, and put on spay and neuter clinics. The area where we hold our clinics in Treasure Cay, in the Abaco Islands, was utterly decimated by Hurricane Dorian. 90% of the Bahamians on the island of Abaco evacuated, where the airlines would not allow them to bring their dogs, almost all of which were unfixed. Since Dorian, the dogs left behind have been having a pawty practicing free love. The spay and neuter work done over the years has come undone, not only by our foundation but many others.
I launched HIT Living International in 2022. We are excited to expand our efforts internationally with our current success and support and our Director of Operations, Kelli Jacobson, and newly appointed Director of Development, Courtney Kaghazi, at the helm of our Los Angeles base. Being based in the Bahamas for six months instead of a couple of visits per year will make a much more significant impact. Bryan and I moved our six dogs and a suitcase full of Gjusta coffee down to the Bahamas, where I recently had our first clinic as HIT Living International. We fixed nine dogs and three cats and rescued twelve, eight-week-old puppies living under the rubble left from Dorian and battered houses. While we couldn’t find 12 volunteers to bring the puppies back to Los Angeles, we were delighted to work with Big Dog Ranch Rescue in FL, who received all 12 puppies on 1/25 after securing a ride with Abaco Freight.
I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle-free, but so far would you say the journey has been a fairly smooth road?
Believe it or not, one of the greatest struggles was the legendary amount of growth we experienced during the peak of the pandemic in 2020. With the stay-at-home orders in play, everyone nationwide wanted to foster, adopt, or sadly had to surrender a 4-legged friend.
In a few short months, we grew from a team of five to twenty-six. Our canine intake numbers increased by 300%, adoption and foster applications were coming in by the tens daily, our donations tripled, and our following grew thousands almost overnight.
At that point, still very green in the rescue world and having a year of experience barely under my belt running a nonprofit dog rescue, the advancements in every section of the organization became incredibly overwhelming. Not to mention while the world shut down, our team worked harder than ever. Affiliated with so many shelters in Los Angeles city and county, were considered essential. Our team was in and out of nearly every shelter every day, delivering supplies, dogs to fosters and adopters and making veterinary appointments all amidst a global pandemic.
Navigating through the growth and COVID while working 14 – 16-hour days was like holding on to a ship’s wheel in a hurricane. We made it out alive and managed to save 300+ lives in the process.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know?
The HIT Living Foundation came to life via the urge to act on our compassion for others. We serve with open hearts and objective minds. HIT Living is a lifestyle choice that each can make through mindfulness in our decisions and how we spend our time. These simple ideas form the pillars of our organization.
At the HIT Living Foundation 501(c)(3), we focus our energy on areas we feel need the most attention: animal and human welfare and responding to crises; whether it be a fire in LA or a hurricane in the Bahamas, with a specific focus on dog rescue, rehabilitation, and re-homing.
Composed of dog walkers, accountants, marketing consultants,= even an assistant professor of research in ophthalmology who recently got her Ph.D., speaks two fluent languages, and runs her own pet accessory company called Akra Creations, makes up our team. None of us have a degree in rescue because it doesn’t exist. We learn something new every day, if not multiple times a day. We constantly ask for medical advice, grooming appointments, transportation help, social shares, fosters, and volunteers. It is taxing to constantly be asking for so much, especially those we ask almost every day. There’s no way we could accomplish what we have without all of our rescue partners saying yes.
Through our ethics, we have been fortunate to partner with some of the most thoughtful, sustainable, techy, and emerging brands in the dog community, such as Found My Animal, Fi, Chippin, and Zignature.
Our Los Angeles-based team of volunteers works tirelessly to place the most urgent dogs at the shelters in our organization. It is a significant game of Tetris with many moving pieces where nearly every situation is critical. We pride ourselves on pulling primarily medical dogs that require more extensive care than the shelters can provide. We ask a lot of our fosters by giving the dogs at-home post-care, availability to transport for vet visits, and making sure whatever dog we bring into our organization receives thorough and diligent medical care and treatment. In turn, we make sure our fosters have the team’s full support through communication and supplies.
Upon adoption, no paw is left unturned, and adopters can trust we have not only evaluated the dog’s behavior to match perfectly with prospective adopters but that the dog will be adopted out with a clean bill of health unless otherwise notated.
We genuinely pride our work ethos on honesty, integrity, and trust pillars. That is what donors, fosters, adopters, networkers, and volunteers have come to find about our ethics and why they keep coming back to help give back.
We’d be interested to hear your thoughts on luck and what role, if any, you feel it’s played for you?
I miss having the time for my creative outlets. I miss having time to myself where my phone is not pinging every few minutes. Those missing moments are fleeting when I look at any of my personal six rescue dogs (yes, all acquired in the last three years) or think back to all the little eyes (even the ones we’ve had to remove from years of neglect) I have helped to change their life for the better. Through what I thought was going to be a hobby, I have realized not only are we changing dogs’ lives, but we’re also changing people’s lives. The number of messages we receive from our fosters and adopters saying their lives have changed for the better in more ways they could have imagined is more than I ever could have asked for in this lifetime.
Receiving all these messages of gratitude would not be present without my team. I understand the impact and difference we are making and how much we have accomplished in only a few short years. I can’t say I believe in luck. But I think “your vibe is your tribe.” Raised to practice love, acceptance, patience, and compassion, I am lucky (wink) enough to have a driving entrepreneurial spirit. Over the last 3.5 years, I have come into contact with some of the most genuine, passionate leaders in their industry, individuals who have helped to shape what this organization is today. We are one of the younger established rescues in the Los Angeles area, with a younger team hungry, motivated, and eager to be the change we wish to see in this world. There’s no luck there, just a team living to our ethos of honesty, integrity, and trust.
Pricing:
- $150 – 10 years and older adoption (fully vaccinated, collar, leash, harness, microchip, altered)
- $450 – 6 months and older adoption (fully vaccinated, collar, leash, harness, microchip, altered)
- $700 – 6 months and under adoption (fully vaccinated, collar, leash, harness, microchip, altered)
Contact Info:
- Website: www.hitlivingfoundation.org
- Instagram: @hitlivingfoundation
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/hitlivingfoundation/
Image Credits
Morgan Demeter
