Wags to Riches dog daycare finds forever home in Lockport

Lockport — Despite not owning one until he was an adult living on his own, Jim Keenan says he’s always had a “special bond” with dogs.

Due to his mother’s severe allergies, the owner of Lockport’s Wags to Riches dog daycare and training center spent his childhood making the most of every interaction he could get with the animals.

“For some reason they always liked me, even as a kid,” he said. “I couldn’t have one at home, so whenever I had a chance, I’d love to spend time with them. Even at parties at friend’s houses, I was always the one playing with the dog.”

In 1990, the LaGrange native took his love of dogs to the professional level when he graduated from the Tom Rose School of Dog Training in Missouri.

“I’ve been working with them ever since,” Keenan said, noting that he has spent years working with animals and furthering his training education.

He worked in New York for multiple years as a dog trainer, even working as a trainer for celebrities including Mariah Carey and Chris Rock. He also spent a year in Europe to work with Turid Rugaas, an author and pioneer of the Calming Signals training method, which he implements at Wags to Riches.

“It’s a matter of finding ways to teach dogs to stay calm and become well-rounded,” explained Keenan of the technique. “It’s important to understand the things dogs do to calm down. For example, one thing we teach is a cut-off signal. If a dog starts barking when someone approaches, we teach owners to put themselves directly in front of their dog to block them off from the stimulation. Eventually, they’ll yawn and start to shake themselves or turn their head away and those are the signals to know they are calming down. Then you can reward them for when they are calm.”

Wags to Riches provides personalized, one-on-one obedience training for dogs and their owners, as well as group classes, and time for dogs to socialize with other dogs during day care hours.

Obedience training ranges from basic skills to more intense behavior modification training for dogs with aggression and anxiety issues, while daycare gives dogs an opportunity to play during the day while their owners are at work and school.

“What people say they love is that we let dogs play,” said Keenan, who brings his own pair of dogs, a Boxer named Molly and a Beagle-mix named Wags, to work with him each day. “They get nap time in the afternoon, but they always go home tired.”

Keenan said a big purpose for the daycare model is to teach dogs structure and to socialize with other animals.

“We’re a family-oriented company,” he explained. “We work on more of a membership model. Dogs need to come in two or three times a week for half- or full-day sessions. We don’t believe in letting random dogs come in for one day just to play, which helps provide a more structured setting.”

Wags to Riches offers dog daycare from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. on weekdays and is closed from 12 to 1:30 each afternoon for the dogs to nap and relax without disturbances.

“What people say they love is that we let dogs play. They get nap time in the afternoon, but they always go home tired.”

—  Jim Keenan, dog trainer and owner of Wags to Riches

While Wags to Riches is new to Lockport, the business, and its membership model have been popular in the community since 2018, when Keenan first opened in Lemont.

“Our lease was up in 2022 and we wanted to stay in the area,” explained Keenan. “We looked at where we could buy property and since we already had a lot of clients from Homer Glen and Lockport, we thought the Lockport location would work really well.”

Wags to Riches opened in its current location at 842 N. State St. in 2023 and has continued to grow in popularity in the community.

“This is an absolutely wonderful community,” said Keenan. “Everybody’s been very supportive. Our business primarily comes from word of mouth, and we’ve had so many people recommend us to their friends and neighbors.”

While Keenan did take time away from professional dog training to work corporate jobs, he continued to work with friends’ dogs and occasionally working with animals in shelters. Ironically, he says, it was his mother who encouraged him to go back to it full-time.

“My mom always said it was a calling of mine,” Keenan said. “She said God gave me a gift to communicate with them. She knew how much I loved them and encouraged me to go back full-time.”

Wags to Riches, which Keenan runs with his wife Kari, was the result of that encouragement after his mother’s passing.

“I love it,” he said, while acknowledging that he will put in extra time on particularly difficult cases. “It’s why I got into it.”

Keenan said its always rewarding to see dogs’ behavior improve and their owners get better at working with them after training.

“We absolutely see improvement all the time,” he said. “Just learning to understand how dogs communicate is the first step to having a fantastic relationship with your pup. You can’t talk to them like their humans, you have to learn to speak dog.”