The health seminar day went ahead on Sunday 20th February. It turned out to be a successful event and I had very positive feedback from everyone who attended the day. Everything ran smoothly and we managed to make a profit for the Dobermann Health Fund. It was nice to see that Dobermann owners and breeders from all over the country, from Essex right up to Edinburgh, attended. We also had a couple of Dobermann enthusiasts from Denmark attend the day. I would like to thank the people of the breed who attended the day and I am glad that it proved to be enjoyable and useful for them. The talks were extremely informative and interesting for anyone who is involved with Dobermanns and so it was important that people of the breed supported the event in order to make it worthwhile, and for the people of the breed to gain more and more vital knowledge. Although the turnout was good I was disappointed that there wasn’t more interest from the people who are actively involved with the breed. I advertised the event at my local training club and the numbers were made up by the people from here. These people actually came up to me at the end of the day and told me that it was one of the best seminar days that they have ever attended and I could have easily charged a lot more for it. They said that they have attended events like this before and paid double the price and the speakers were nowhere near as good.
The only comments that I received that could improve the day was that maybe we should have thought about running the day back to back with the DBC meeting to save people travelling back and forth on two consecutive weekends and this may have drummed up some more support from people who would be attending the meeting. This is something that maybe could be considered in the future. My main problem with this would be that I would be unable to attend both as I spent the whole of Saturday preparing food and getting everything organised for the day. Another comment made to improve the day was that people would have liked handouts. I had already considered this, I had asked the speakers if they would be happy to produce handouts for the delegates but unfortunately I got a resounding no to this question. I know myself, as I attend seminars on a weekly basis as part of my job, that this is not standard procedure. Most speakers expect you to make notes yourself. I have however got copies of both Jo Dukes McEwan’s and Lorna Kennedy’s talks and info from Mike Guilliard on the PennHip scheme if anyone who attended the seminar would be interested in a copy please email me on r.barber@liverpool.ac.uk and I will forward them on.
