Player Pets: Hobey, the Wild's team dog for the 2020-21 season

Each month, Wild.com will feature a Minnesota Wild player and his pet(s). This series also appears in Wild Magazine.
The Minnesota Wild adopted
Hobey
, a Golden Retriever, from Coco's Heart Dog Rescue for the 2020-21 season. He will be handed off to Soldier's 6 to be a service dog after his tenure with the Wild, but in the time being will be bringing joy to the Wild players, employees and fans.
Wild.com's Tyler Savitsky chatted with the team's Chief Financial Officer and Executive Vice President Jeff Pellegrom to discuss Hobey, the Adopt-A-Dog program, presented by Petsmart and how he was entrusted with fostering Hobey:

TS:Can you explain how and why the team decided to bring in Hobey, how it happened and who you partnered with?
JP:The concept of a Wild dog came from Matt Majka and the marketing team a couple of years ago and Breezer was our first Wild dog last year and our idea is to have this going forward. It was very successful last year having a dog that could interact with the fans and it is just a great partnership both with Coco's Heart, which is where we got Breezer and also got Hobey. They are a rescue organization out of Wisconsin, but very close to the border of Minnesota and they do a lot of work in Minnesota. And also the partnership with Soldier's 6, which is an organization that places service dogs with military veterans and so that is where Breezer is now. He is with his service family. Hobey will do the same thing. We got Hobey in May from Coco's Heart as a puppy and our family will take care of him until July of this coming summer. Then, he will be placed with a military family through Soldier's 6. He should be going to games right now and he should be visiting fans. and doing the things that Breezer did last year, and he should also be coming into the office and hanging out with all of our employees, but since we are not in the office or playing games, he's just hanging around here. He's chewing on a bone as we speak.
TS:How did you end up being the one who will foster Hobey?
JP:It worked out really well for us, actually. I definitely raised my hand and volunteered for the task. My family has always had dogs, we lost our last dog about a year and a half, two years ago. We were having a tough decision of what to do next. We have four kids, but our youngest is a high school senior this year, so we're about to become empty nesters and we know what the commitment is to have a dog, so we were just wondering where to go next with that and our high school junior at that time was struggling a bit, as we all were, with Covid and what are we going to do now that we can't go anywhere, school is shut down, everything is distance learning. The community team was looking for the next host of the Wild dog and we said that was the perfect opportunity for us. We will get Hobey ready for his next life as a service dog and also to have a dog for a year and a half, and not have that obligation necessarily after he goes, or we can choose to get a dog. We'll see what happens.
TS:How has Covid impacted what Hobey can do with the organization and what is the hope in the future?
JP:He has done a few things. At the VA, there was a

for the veterans and he was there, along with Breezer actually, in the summer. For the Wild playoff game, we had a host party at CHS Field and he was

greeting fans at that event and getting a lot of pictures taken there, a lot of selfies. At Thanksgiving meal pick-up, just this past week, he was there to hangout with the people handing out meals. So he has done some things when we have employees together. Around the draft, he was in the

trying to help Bill Guerin pick the right players, so he does things like that and gets a few posts out there on his social media account. What I hope he will be able to do, I hope we will have games in the late winter or spring with fans and he can just go hangout and visit our fans. That's what I'm hoping he can do.
TS:How was the name Hobey decided?
JP:It was a group decision. We had some different names. He was named Arkansas by the rescue, so we knew we were going to be changing his name to something hockey related. They chose Hobey Baker. Hobey Baker was, in his era, back in the early 1900's, was the first really famous American-born hockey player. Up until then, it was really more Canadians, but he was one of the first really well known American-born hockey players. He went to Princeton and played hockey there. Most people know the Hobey Baker Award, that award was named after him and is given to the Division 1 Men's Hockey player that is the most outstanding in a number of attributes, including his play but also his leadership and things like that. The Hobey Baker Award sits in our arena over by Gate 4, over by the Fan's Zone, so that's how most fans know about Hobey Baker. It's more about the award than the history, but that is where it came from.
TS:Do you have any favorite moment or favorite thing to do with Hobey?
JP:Hobey is an absolute delight. He is a wonderful dog. He loves hanging out with us and running around the backyard. He makes us laugh all the time. He chases his tail, literally chases his tail. He'll grab it and spin around in circles, which is hilarious. He can catch snowballs and if you check out his social media, you can see that he is good at catching things. You throw an ice cube at him, he'll catch it in his mouth. One of the things I love doing with him is going to the trails near our house and he'll go running with me on those trails. He loves to do that and loves to go running. He's just a really delightful dog. He's easy-going, great with people and other dogs. There's not one moment. it's just everyday. He's a funny dog and we just love laughing at him and hanging out with him.
TS:Are there any cool tricks that you personally taught him or any human foods that he loves?
JP:He's actually a funny dog that way. He loves his dog food, but he doesn't beg a lot. When it's time to eat, he's very attentive. He's trained so that he has to sit and wait for us to say it's okay to eat, so he'll sit there very politely. You can leave the room or do whatever you want, he will wait for you to come back and say it is okay to eat and then he'll just eat. He used to eat it so fast, just inhale it, and sometimes would get sick, but not anymore. He's outgrown all that. But I have to say, there was one time that we had some steaks and we were very strict about not feeding our dogs people food with our other dogs, but with Hobey we've slipped a little bit. Maybe it's that we're older or because we have him for a year and a half, but my wife snuck him a piece of sirloin and he looked at us like, "you've been holding out on me. where has this been my whole life." And he gives you those sad puppy eyes, like I need some more of that. We haven't given him a lot of people food. We give him a lot of treats. We do training with him. We don't do the service training with him yet, but we do obedience training with him, so he gets a lot of treats. Any kind of food, he just inhales.