We first saw actress, Rachel Brosnahan, portray a call girl in the first, second, and third seasons of the political thriller, House of Cards (it doesn’t end well for her character), but most of us know her as the title character in the nostalgic and quirky, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. We follow her “Midge Maisel” as she goes from being a young, brisket-making upper middle-class Jewish housewife living on Manhattan’s Upper West Side to an outspoken, wildly inappropriate standup comedienne (and shocking everyone along the way).

The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel doesn’t own pets in the series, but the person who portrays her does. Brosnahan is the very proud owner of “Nikki,”  a Pit Bull mix (and, according to Brosnahan, “gentle and sweet and needy. She just stares at you with these human eyeballs. Her well is very deep.” and “Winston,” her Shiba Inu, “who is filled to the brim with ’tude. He was fiercely independent, more like a cat, but he’s getting cuddlier.”

In reading various profiles of Brosnahan, one senses the importance of family to her (the late designer, Kate Spade, was Rachel’s aunt), and her dogs are part of that family. Indeed, during the few weeks the cast spent in the Catskills, Brosnahan brought along her dogs. Her Twitter profile describes her as “Mother of Dogs. Feminist. Actor. Snacker,” and both her Facebook and Instagram page (which she describes as being, “Mostly my dogs. Sometimes other people’s dogs. Sometimes my face”) are dotted with pictures of Mikki and Winston whom she clearly adores.

She’s a dog person. When she saw an elderly dog alone and struggling in a dog park in Santa Fe, New Mexico where she was filming the second season of Manhattan, she had to do something. Here is what she did.

Images from Ms. Brosnahan’s Instagram page