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About Us

For all of her 42 years, Phenix Dogs founder Leann “Annie” Phenix has had a keen affection and admiration for dogs. She has enjoyed the company of dogs in her life every day for close to half a century. She fostered her first dog more than 15 years ago. After that first foster dog, more than 150 dogs have called her and her husband Jeff’s home a temporary resting place before their permanent homes were found.

In the summer of 2007, Annie formalized her training and achieved a Canine Specialist certificate from Triple Crown Dog Training Academy. Her goal is to utilize all that she has learned from a lifetime dogs to help dogs and their owners learn to communicate in a happy, healthy, effective way.

When a new client comes to Phenix Dogs for training, Phenix has a vast tool box of training tools to deal with issues that concern dog owners. She uses what each dog needs to learn the fastest. Most dogs enjoy being clicker trained and love learning how to learn. Phenix takes what she learned from working with horses and applies it to dog training: use the least amount of force as possible and rely heavily on effective communication through timing, consistency and motivation.

Because of her serious commitment to re-homing homeless dogs, Phenix Dogs offers substantial discounts to anyone who opens their hearts and doors to a rescued dog.

Annie has years of experience working with every kind of dog, from purebred to mixed breed, from young puppy to senior dogs. Your dog does not have to come from a shelter to experience common behavioral or obedience problems. Nor do all shelters dogs inherently come with problems.

Annie and her husband, Jeff, live on a Hill Country ranch. They share their daily lives with 3 horses, 7 donkeys, 4 sheep, a feral cat and 6 dogs (all of whom were once homeless). Annie actively competes in the dog sports of Agility and Herding with three of her rescued dogs. The other three dogs in her pack have achieved their Canine Good Citizen certification from the American Kennel Club.

Annie is a member of both the International Association of Canine Professionals and the Association of Pet Dog Trainers of America. She has also achieved Level 2 with her horse Quarter Horse, Milagro, in the Natural Horsemanship world.

Prior to becoming a professional dog trainer, Annie founded the nationally recognized publicity firm, Phenix & Phenix Literary Publicists, Inc. She sold that company in 2005 in order to pursue her passion for helping animals and their people. Her former company is now called Bookpros, Inc.

She was named the Austin Communicator of the Year by Women in Communication in 2000.