About Mia Övernäs
Mia was born in Sweden and has called Ireland home since 2011. Her relationship with animals began in childhood — long before it became a profession. As a teenager, she was deeply involved in breeding, showing, and judging hamsters, gerbils, and guinea pigs, alongside a passion for horse riding.
Growing up with two poodles in the family, she joined her local dog training club and earned her dog training certification in 1981, planting the seeds for a career that would span more than four decades.
Her love of animals naturally led her to veterinary nursing, a role she held from 1986 to 1996 at two of Sweden’s largest animal hospitals. During this period, she established her own clinic dedicated to the care of small exotic pets such as hamsters and guinea pigs — a niche that was largely underserved at the time. She authored a practical manual to guide veterinarians in treating these animals and went on to lecture veterinary students on the fundamentals of small rodent care. It was here, too, that she first began practising handstripping — initially on guinea pigs — a technique that would later become central to her grooming work.
The natural extension of her coat-care work with poodles led Mia to co-found Trimkompaniet. This grooming salon opened in 1992 with her sister and a colleague from the animal hospital. The salon was built on a commitment to quality and ongoing learning, with breed specialists regularly invited to teach and share their expertise.
In parallel, Mia ran her kennel, Sisterhood, breeding champion apricot miniature, medium, and standard poodles as well as wire-haired fox terriers. This pursuit deepened her understanding of breed structure and coat genetics. Over time, she developed specialist skills in handstripping, hand-scissoring, and Asian Fusion styling.
In 1998, Mia attended her first international grooming competition in Belgium as a spectator. The following year, she entered competition herself in France, winning a silver medal in the poodle champion division. This marked the beginning of a distinguished competitive career across Europe, earning numerous placements — including a 4th place finish at the Oster Tournament of Champions with a handstrip Lakeland terrier, widely regarded as Europe’s most prestigious grooming competition — as well as the title of Groomer of the Year twice in Ireland. Mia retired from competition in 2014 and has since focused on judging at the international level.
Throughout her career, sharing knowledge has been as important to Mia as acquiring it. She taught at an animal care college for several years while continuing to run her grooming salon. She later established a dedicated dog grooming school offering what was, for many years, the most comprehensive grooming course available in Sweden.
Recognising a gap in continuing professional development for qualified groomers, she organised her first seminar specifically for dog groomers in 2000. Since then, she has delivered education in many forms — from one-to-one mentoring to keynote presentations at gatherings of over 400 groomers — covering both practical styling techniques and broader professional topics such as business practices and the science behind grooming.
In 2021, Mia launched The Empowered Groomer, an educational platform offering video courses, written resources, and a blog designed to support groomers at every stage of their careers. The platform reflects her enduring belief that great grooming is built on understanding — not just technique.
Science has always underpinned Mia’s approach. Whether exploring the veterinary care of small rodents, the genetics of canine coat types, or the effects of grooming products at a structural level, she has consistently sought to understand the “why” behind practice. This commitment has involved extensive engagement with scientific literature and collaboration with specialists across a range of disciplines — work that has also led to meaningful partnerships with fellow grooming educators.
This book is a reflection of that journey — a distillation of decades of hands-on experience, ongoing curiosity, and a genuine desire to elevate the profession she loves.
You can find Mia on Facebook or on www.dreamdogz.ie
About Carola Copland
Carola Copland (born 1968 in Duisburg, Germany) is a German lawyer who worked as a manager in one of the world’s top 50 IT companies in Germany, Switzerland and Hungary before moving to the UK in 2012. Throughout her career, topics that particularly interested her always seemed to end in certification – she has a drive to know and learn things ‘properly’. In 2010, two Parson Russell Terriers joined the family. Carola had no idea about proper grooming, but learned a lot from breeders, fanciers, long-time owners and groomers who were willing to share their knowledge and experience. The pandemic created an opportunity to add the officially recognised iPet Level 3 qualification, “Diploma in Dog Grooming and Salon Management,” to her list of qualifications.
Carola then worked for 1.5 years in the grooming salon of the local world champion in handstripping (Groom Team England won the World Championship in 2022).
Since 2022, she has been the exclusive representative for Groomer.dk in the UK, gives basic handstripping seminars, still strips dogs for selected clients herself, and takes opportunities to learn about specific breeds in depth. She occasionally returns to her previous line of work.
Together with her co-author Mia, Carola set out to answer the many questions she still had about handstripping, skin and hair care in dogs. Along the way, the two of them tracked down solid, scientifically sound answers to most of them – though a few stubborn puzzles remained unresolved even after extensive digging. They nicknamed one such case “Schrödinger’s hairgrowth”: hair that, going by the genetics, simply shouldn’t grow – and yet sometimes does, with no conclusive research to explain why.
You can find Carola on LinkedIn or as Groomer.dk UK on Facebook.