Yesterday I attended the Pet Dog Training Instructors (PDTI) National Conference with guest speaker John Rogerson.

I’d not heard of John Rogerson before and didn’t know anything about him, but the topics really interested me and the price was good so I booked on.

The four topics covered were:

• Breeding and raising better dogs for our communities
• A new approach to Companion Dog Training
• Dog behaviour problems and simple solutions
• Aggression

Well today I am currently in the process of organising and writing up my notes from yesterday as they are all over the place! John would be discussing breeders and then start talking about puppy development and then mention a training method, then throw out a hard-hitting statistic, and then come back to breeders. It was all relevant and linked together… but I like my notes to be organised into sections and topics and instead they ended up a little scrambled! Don’t get me wrong, I found his tangents so useful and interesting! I much prefer speakers that go off onto different but relevant topics rather than sticking to a “script”.

John was a really engaging and entertaining speaker. He oozes confidence about what he is talking about, although errs a little on the arrogant side. Almost a “this is my opinion but it is the only one that matters” attitude. However I liked what he was saying and how he said it, although I took my own opinion on whether I agreed with everything or not.

It was certainly an eye-opening day! Some of the points John gave seemed so obvious yet we often don’t do them or don’t think about them. He talks about communicating with dogs emotionally using happiness or disgust (very different to anger). He also talks highly about the importance of being our dogs companions and working on companion dog training over obedience dog training. It’s such a no-brainer… we want our dogs to pay attention to us, to work for us, to behave for us, yet so often we don’t build a companionship with our dogs. Plus we are no longer teaching our dogs real-life situations and behaviours.

I’m not going to elaborate on the things he said as I’d be here all day, plus I paid my money to attend for my benefit, not to give it all to you for free. But I’m sure I’ll be writing more about the topics and thoughts from yesterday, and I’ll definitely be having a review of my dog training methods and advice that is available to new and potential owners.

Mind officially blown!