About Carolyn
Carolyn Honish comes with 20 + years of dog training experience. She started dog training in 2004 when she got a longhaired dachshund puppy named Lumpi. As a teacher of children who are deaf/hard of hearing, Carolyn started bringing Lumpi to school with her because he was a wonderful motivator. Lumpi became a therapy dog, and Carolyn started to incorporate Lumpi into her teaching.
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She started an afterschool dog training program called "Paws for Alert" that brought students who were deaf with their hearing peers together for the purposes of training dogs. This program compelled participating students to communicate with one another because dogs were involved. Staff from the school also brought their dogs and got involved as well.
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In 2007, Carolyn met Debi Krakar with Dog Alliance and joined forces with her as they shared a common vision. Carolyn and Lumpi began doing pet therapy visits with the Dog Alliance. They visited public libraries, nursing homes, and gave dog safety talks to scout troops and various classrooms all over the Austin and Round Rock ISDs. In 2008, Carolyn helped Debi start teaching summer camps for kids at Dog Alliance - these became a huge success, and are still very popular today.
In April 2008, Carolyn adopted Buzz - a little four month old deaf longhaired dachshund. Buzz became quite the mascot at Carolyn's school since she taught children who were deaf. The students became Buzz's first teachers of sign language and loved that they could communicate with Buzz in ASL.
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In 2009, Carolyn earned her CPDT-KA designation. She also became a Delta Society/Pet Partners pet therapy evaluator. She led Dog Alliance's pet therapy evaluations from 2009 until covid hit in 2020. She became Dog Alliance's Pet Therapy Director in 2013 and managed over 170 pet therapy teams (dogs and their handlers) until 2020.
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Carolyn has taught numerous beginning obedience classes, advanced obedience classes, pet therapy classes, advanced pet therapy classes, classes for deaf dogs, puppy classes, and canine good citizen classes at Dog Alliance. She left Dog Alliance in May 2024 when she moved to Hallettsville to take care of family.
Although leaving such a wonderful organization has been difficult, she remains deeply grateful for the opportunities Dog Alliance has provided her to grow as a dog trainer.
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Carolyn has raised three pet therapy dogs - Lumpi, Buzz, and Gemma - all longhaired dachshunds. Today, Gemma is the only therapy dog. Gemma accompanies Carolyn to Ezzell ISD once a week where she reads with students. Carolyn has Tango and Lucy as well - also longhaired dachshunds.
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