Word travels rapidly in the close quarters of a massive league clubhouse. It’s not unusual for gamers to sling tips and referrals throughout the place, from dining places to getaway locations … and even pet trainers.
That is how Wesley Dawe, owner of Fantastic DaweG, ended up with a increasing contingent of World Sequence champions in his clientele.
For Astros stars Yordan Alvarez, Mauricio Dubón, Jose Altuve and Martín Maldonado, Dawe is the go-to when it arrives to getting treatment of their pet dogs. The fast paced everyday living of a experienced baseball participant usually means they invest fifty percent of the normal time away from their beloved animals — nevertheless there will be dogs aplenty at Moment Maid Park on Sunday — so it will take a very good deal of belief to depart their furry good friends with someone else.
If you ask them, Dawe has earned it in spades.
“Wesley has some thing that provides me self esteem and comfort when I’m absent and I go away them,” Dubón said. “Which is a thing I often seem for, simply because people two guys are quite a great deal my everyday living right now. It can be some thing that I have faith in him a large amount with, and I you should not leave my pet dogs with [just] anybody.”
Dawe’s journey to exactly where he is now has not been linear. Just before starting off Fantastic DaweG, he had prior working experience education hen puppies but hadn’t worked in the area since the mid-2010s.
When the COVID-19 pandemic struck, Dawe started moonlighting in canine instruction here and there — and then made a decision to pursue his passion comprehensive time in July 2020. Dawe stop his working day work, opened Superior DaweG and carved out as substantially place as achievable in his 750-sq.-foot dwelling to make it take place.
He was residing, in his words, in a doggy kennel.
“All of this blood, sweat, tears, and very long evenings and sacrificing a lot, has paid off,” Dawe stated. “I had kennels almost everywhere. I had two kennels in my area. The place upcoming to my room experienced upwards of seven kennels in it at periods, and I would have kennels in my kitchen.”
Good DaweG was a 1-guy display till just lately, and a few decades afterwards, Dawe’s hard function has paid dividends. He’s managed to update his space and expand his operations — so substantially so that when Alvarez commenced looking for someplace to board his pet dogs late previous Oct, he was directed to Excellent DaweG.
As Houston’s 2022 World Sequence run was nearing a triumphant close, Dawe was contacted by Alvarez’s spouse, Monica, about taking treatment of their two canines — Milo, a Frenchie, and Luka, a King Charles spaniel. What commenced as boarding turned into occasional teaching sessions and even some cross-state journey when the Alvarezes enlisted Dawe’s assist in transporting the canines to Florida in the course of the offseason.
Pleased customers commonly guide to a lot more. When Dubón began inquiring close to the clubhouse about anyone to watch his pet dogs — Marcelo, a Pug, and Cash, a Frenchie — in April, Alvarez recommended Dawe.
And with Alvarez’s endorsement in hand, it was a no-brainer for Dubón to adhere to accommodate.
“He is pretty picky,” Dubón reported. “Alvarez is very picky … so I realized my two guys were being in fantastic hands.”
Then came Altuve and his Cavapoo, Brunello, in June. His brother, Carlos, also makes use of Fantastic DaweG’s products and services — he and Dawe occurred to meet although participating in leisure softball.
“[Alvarez and Dubón] seriously like him, and they trust him,” Altuve claimed. “Obviously, my brother and I, we are super close, as well, and he trusts him, far too. So I am like, this is a lot more than more than enough for me to trust him, much too.”
Maldonado and his Australian Labradoodle dog, Venus, round out the group for the time getting. The Astros’ backstop had listened to promising issues about Dawe’s function with his teammates’ canines just before deciding to access out.
For Dawe, it is really definitely a feather in his cap to have the backing of four massive leaguers. But he finds pleasure in his work no subject whose dog he’s schooling. Drawing comparisons to the operate his most very well-regarded clientele have to place in day in and working day out, Dawe said he sees his function with dogs as a craft that won’t end once he closes up shop for the working day.
“Altuve will not likely get far better at fielding grounders except if he methods fielding grounders, proper? He is not likely to get more robust unless he goes to the gymnasium and he operates out and he places in the reps above and above and above,” Dawe reported. “Individuals you should not definitely realize how reliable and how many reps you have to set into this until finally they get into it, and they are like, ‘Holy smokes.'”
It may well need a bounty of work, but it truly is rewarding for coach and proprietor alike when the success start off to present. For Dawe, it is really a labor of appreciate.
“I enjoy canine. I’ve usually been close to dogs. I never for when assumed that I was heading to be a canine coach as my qualified vocation,” he mentioned. “It is the most gratifying emotion in the earth when I am ready to just take a doggy that bites persons and bites other pet dogs and is just completely chaotic, and convert them into a civilized pet dog in modern society.”
Dubón, in certain, stated his pet dogs have been behaving significantly better soon after functioning with Dawe for a small time.
“We ended up in L.A., and basically my dad observed the change, like, ‘Oh, he’s behaving. He is in this article, sitting down down. He is chilling,'” Dubón claimed. “But I think we bought the trainer simply because of me. I spoil them so considerably.”
Dawe’s ability with correcting their dogs’ behaviors is a additionally, but for the quartet of Astros that use his providers, it all goes back again to how he treats them. Canines are not just animals, they are lifelong companions, and they necessarily mean a good deal to the gamers and their families.
Soon after all, the canine times of summer time are not so bad when man’s ideal buddy is there every single move of the way.
“They are part of our spouse and children,” Maldonado explained.
MLB.com Astros defeat reporter Brian McTaggart contributed to this tale.
