About the Author

Karyn Garvin

The “Divine Dog” Trainer

All dog trainers teach through stories. Karyn’s stories just happen to be based on her belief in the “Divine,” that power which is greater than ourselves.  Her integrated approach to dog training includes spirituality, psychology, etiology, science and the natural order of life as we know it.

There are only a handful of people who have been training dogs professionally for as long as Karyn has. “Professionally” is the key word here. This has been her livelihood, working at it full time since 1977. She was a professional dog trainer before it was really even known as, or considered, the popular profession that it is today. Certainly she has also ridden the tides of change that have affected the dog training industry from then until now.

Karyn has always loved working with dog owners and coaching people as much as she loves training dogs. She favors working with people and their dogs on an individual basis first, then furthering their training by enrolling them in a group class when they are ready. The advantage group class training has after the completion of individual training is that it allows each team to polish their skills in a distracting environment. Conservatively, at this time, Karyn has given no less than 40,000 private lessons where she has taught dog owners how to train their dogs.

As a young child, Karyn moved with her family from Iowa to India. In India she was deeply affected as she experienced the harsh realities and living conditions of that country. She was left with a burning desire to help others, and to make a difference in the world. Those experiences, along with her college studies in behavior modification, have also contributed to making Karyn the trainer she is today.

Much of what drives Karyn is her commitment to saving pets’ lives. Too many dogs and cats are relinquished because of behavioral issues that were not dealt with effectively by their owners. Karyn has discovered numerous opportunities to be instrumental in the field of dog training through her own inventive solutions. A key way in which she measures her own success is by identifying needs and filling them.

She found just such an opportunity on September 4, 1993. She was called to a client’s home to help with a thirteen-year-old male poodle that had been marking in the house his entire life. What Karyn discovered was that all of the traditional methods of managing a male dog that marks would not work here. This dog had Containment Phobia, which meant that restricting his area to a crate or a small room had even more grave consequences for the owner. The wife had given up on trying years ago, but it was her new husband who came up with the idea of calling a dog trainer.

Karyn remembers the very moment that the new solution came to her. She was sitting at the customer’s kitchen table and asking the universe, “God, what am I supposed to tell these people?” It was then that the idea flashed into her mind. In order to continue giving the dog the freedom to move around the house, he would need to be diapered. This thirteen-year-old poodle quickly changed his troubling behavior after peeing in his diaper only three times.

Karyn went on to create the first professionally retailed diaper for male dogs, the MarkOut® Wrap, and wrote the training manual, MarkOut® Marking. She promoted the new product and method of training over the internet: www.MarkOut.com. Today, diapering a dog is a well-known method in the dog training world.

When pot-bellied pigs were all the rage in the 1990s, Karyn was inventive in running the world’s first pot-bellied pig obedience class. She was there to help those pet owners learn how to live harmoniously with their new pets. You can still view the documentary video by going to her website www.GarvinsDivineDogTraining.com.

In 1998 she expanded her dog training business to include the Invisible Fence® Brand solution, and became a dealer for Southern Arizona. As she grew familiar with the standard training procedure for Invisible Fence® Brand dealers, she found a need for a better way of training. Once she had developed, tried and tested her new method of training dogs and cats, she shared it through the Invisible Fence® Brand network. They adopted the new method of training now known as the Perfect Start™ Method that is used by dealers across the United States. She was also fundamental in authoring the original Perfect Start™ training manual.

Soon after opening her Invisible Fence® Brand dealership she discovered another need. As a dealer, Karyn found that her business was servicing more “Houdini” dogs than she had ever encountered as a dog trainer. Owners, looking for solutions to keep their escape artists from breaking out of crates as well as jumping fences, often contact a pet containment business like the Invisible Fence® Brand for solutions. While a pet containment system can be part of the solution, dealers and dog owners still need to understand the condition thoroughly in order to manage the behavior.

It was then that Karyn first coined the term “Containment Phobia” and created the distinction between Containment Phobia and Separation Anxiety. Her article was first published in the Invisible Fence® Brand Dog’s Life newsletter in 2003. It was later published in the International Association for Canine Professionals’ Safe Hands Journal and was an important advancement in the treatment for Containment Phobic dogs.

At present, her passion is centered around sharing what she has learned over her long career by means of books, webinars and speaking engagements to usher in The Integrated Approach as a method of training to the dog training industry.

Karyn currently lives in Tucson, Arizona. For the growing list of books she has authored and websites she has developed, you can always stay up to date by visiting www.KarynGarvin.com.