Co-owner Andrea Sleeper says she and her husband, Allan, own Pup Country Club.
“It provides a luxury holistic pet-grooming service,” she says. “We come to you. We have two trailers, one in which one groomer can work, and a larger one that accommodates two people grooming. I’ve trained our staff of two groomers and an assistant groomer. Where a typical grooming service washes dogs in a tub, dries them, and gives them back to the owner, or perhaps cuts their hair or nails, we go beyond the bare minimum.”
Pup Country Club starts with products from the high end of the market, she says. They order different shampoos for specific breeds, which may have curly, smooth, silky, or wavy coats — as much variety as humans have in hair. For instance, if the client is a Cairn terrier, the breed has a rough coat and tougher skin, which tends to dry out. So the coat should end up feeling rough, but not unhealthy.
She starts with a shampoo formulated for rough hair, she says, with a conditioner to replace the normal hydration of the skin. Then she follows up with “Hydroboost,” a product that seals the moisture into the skin.
She says, “That way if the terrier needs a haircut the skin won’t react to the clippers. The dog goes home with healthy skin, and no dog smell.”
Sleeper says she was born in Austin, but moved to Mexico when she was 5 years old. Her father, José Carlos Lozano, was a university researcher who traveled working on projects, so she ended up going to school in Mexico, Germany, and the Netherlands. She went to the International High School in Monterrey, Mexico, a prestigious school focused on languages and entrepreneurship. After graduating in 2007, she earned a bachelor’s degree in international relations and a master’s in international communication from Tecnologico de Monterrey, also studying at the University of Twente in Enschede, Netherlands, and Universität Bielefeld in Bielefeld, Germany.
“After I graduated, in 2012, I was recruited by the FBI and the U.S. Department of State,” she says. “Their recruiting centers are in San Antonio, and they required me to move there during the qualification process. The FBI had a housing program, where they checked out apartments and ran backgrounds on landlords, so I would be close enough to their center. Allan became my landlord, but I needed a job to support myself while I was going through the process.
“Allan said his mother, Cathy Sleeper, had a pet-grooming business. I asked, ‘What is pet-grooming?’ He explained, and I said, ‘People pay for that?’ Cathy was looking for an assistant groomer, and the position had the flexible hours I needed to work around the recruiting program.”
Sleeper adds, “Allan and I had been messaging back and forth through the secure FBI system, and had never physically met. We decided to ‘see if each other really existed’ at the Whataburger at U.S. 281 and Loop 1604. We sat there and talked until 1 a.m., when they threw us out. It turned out his family had been in the grooming business since 1962, and he had been grooming for eight years, the fourth generation. Allan and I were married in 2014, and after I trained under Cathy for a year, we took over the San Antonio business.”
But before marriage, she says she told Allan she was only in San Antonio because the FBI required it. Instead, she wanted a place with land, and animals. So on a subsequent date he took her to the Apple Store, a Medina restaurant, and she fell in love with the town. They started planning a move, and in 2020, when their oldest child was ready for school, they moved. Now they have four children. Allison is a fourth-grader and Logan a third-grader at Medina Elementary School. Idabelle, named after Allan’s great-grandmother, is 2 years old, and Evelyn, named after Sleeper’s great-grandmother, is a newborn. They also live with Sleeper’s mother, Rocio Aragon, and now they have two cats, Luna and Louis.
“In my 12 years in grooming, and Allan’s 20, we continue to invest in education,” Sleeper says. “Every year we attend the U.S. Pet Pro Classic in Dallas, the best exposition in the country. I’ve earned an associate degree in applied animal sciences, and a number of specializations and certifications including holistic pet health coach, veterinary technician, ultrasonic pet dental technician, Fear Free certified, and certified pet nutritionist. I just qualified for my cosmetic dental cleaning certification. I spend a lot of time reading, researching, and writing holistic research papers for association projects.”
She says the Medina Community Church is “like their rock.” She volunteers at the Out-of-the-Way Café serving meals to kids on Fridays, and the Medina Community Pantry.
“My father was very logical, and an atheist,” Sleeper says. “In my teens I discovered a saying, ‘Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest,’ and it gave me a lot of comfort. It wasn’t until 2014, when I became a Christian, that I discovered it was a Bible verse, Matthew 11:28. I started out reading it in Spanish, but after I came to the U.S. I quoted it in English.”
