What an amazing show! It was my first show personally with the RFVS and it certainly wont be my last… incredible people, dogs and energy, what more could you ask for?!
I started with the RFVS in May 2021, and at that time we were just being phased out of lockdown, so the Society hadn’t been able to attend any shows in the UK for a couple of years. As shows have started up again, we jumped at the opportunity to attend Edition Dog Live 2022 at their invitation (we were booked to attend in 2020, but we all know what happened there).
For me personally it was doubly amazing… firstly I got to attend a wonderful dog led show (I love dogs and would happily spend all day, every day, in their company), but I also got to actually physically meet members of the RFVS team that I had known and worked for, for over a year, but had never actually met.
Here are some quotes from the team about the day (it’s not all about me after all 🙂
“EDL has a fantastic vibe – a coming together of wonderful people working holistically for the benefit of their dogs. Can’t wait for next year.”
“Enormous thanks to Edition Dog Live for inviting us to their event, it was absolutely time and money well spent and we had an amazing response to our request for help getting our information leaflets into veterinary practices. Thank you to everyone who responded so enthusiastically!”
“It was great to see everyone in the flesh after such a long time, there was a great vibe. I was fantastic not having to reexplain WHY I do what I do. People accepted that as a given and wanted to understand the nuances. Everyone was open to a holistic approach and keen to learn. The RFVS stand was very busy and it was so good to talk to so many interested people and to share our new leaflets for them to pass on to their vets, we’re already looking forward to next year’s event”
We also reached out to Edition Dog Live to thank them for having us at the event and to hear how they felt it went. I was also curious about numbers of attendees. There were A LOT of people there, but I had no idea how many, and was very impressed when they came back to us with 4500 visitors.
Mark Dow, Managing Director/Co-Owner at Edition Media Ltd responded with the below quote:
The team at Edition Dog Magazine were blown away by the positive response, participation and and turn out at their inaugural event Edition Dog Live. Edition Dog Live is the UKs first holistic dog show focussing on health, wellbeing, nutrition and behaviour and was open to both the public and professionals.
Over 4500 visitors attended with over 850 dogs experiencing several talks including raw feeding, dog first aid, kids around dogs and participated in canine massage, canine hoopers, dog chill zone and photography on the Edition Dog stand amongst many other activities. The live arena was a massive hit as well.
Thank you to the RFVS for attending with the team and supporting the event.
See you on 27th August 2023.
‘4500 Visitors and 850 dogs’
What was especially lovely about the attendees was how varied they were. We met people with large businesses, small businesses, families just having a day out, children enjoying the free face painting a couple of stalls away, other stallholders and everyone in between.
It was also lovely to be able to physically meet some of our Affiliates. Affiliates are businesses that support us in our mission ‘The Raw Feeding Veterinary Society is a friendly community of veterinary professionals standing together globally to promote and educate our colleagues and pet caregivers about the power of species appropriate nutrition to support the wellbeing of cats and dogs’.
As part of our Affiliate Membership, we regularly meet virtually with our Affiliates (on a One-to-One basis with Gold Affiliates, and in Groups with Silver and Bronze Affiliates), to get to know each other, to discuss how we can work together moving forward, and to hear what they would like us to do as a Society.
We have attended a few shows, pre-covid, and we have an annual Conference which is open to the public, but one of the items of feedback we received from our Affiliates was that they wanted us to attend more shows, to help them on the ground in spreading the word on the benefits of species appropriate nutrition, and if nothing else, Edition Dog Live has proven this idea a success!
Here are what a few of our Affiliates who attended Edition Dog Live 2022 had to say:
“The show was really busy and the heartening thing was the amount of people we met who were either already feeding raw or who were seriously considering it. I mentioned the RFVS at every opportunity and sent people to the stand to meet the team – it’s great to have a group like this to add credibility to what we, as producers of the food, are saying. Well worth attending.”
“As big supporters of Edition Dog Magazine and their ethos, in 2020 we, Leucillin, leapt at the opportunity to be able to sponsor their first wholly holistic canine event. Two years in the making and it lived up to every expectation.
As skincare specialists at Edition Dog Live we wanted to tackle the big topic of what makes up skin health and as such invited forward thinking and highly knowledgeable industry professionals to “take the floor’ and join the discussion. It was a pleasure and an honour to host Dr Nick Thompson, Stuart Simons, Dog First Aid, Humanimal Trust and Utterly Rawsome to talk about the elements that contribute towards skin health, and give people the opportunity to ask the questions that mean the most for their dog!
Our “take away” from the day was a thoroughly successful launch to a truly special event which we hope will forge it’s way into being a highlight of the canine calendar in the future. There was so much information, education and entertainment throughout the hall, which was buzzing with the enthusiasm of like-minded dog owners. Huge congratulations to Mark, Jennifer and their team, roll on Edition Dog 2023!”
“What a success! I really enjoyed EDL, it was an honour to host the live arena, and so rewarding to speak to visitors and their dogs. Everyone agreed they’d learnt something at the show, and felt more aware of their dogs wellbeing. I think for a first event is was so well attended, indicating that pet parents are indeed interested in discovering natural healthcare and nutrition for the dogs.”
So as you can see, the success was felt across the entire team.
We were also attending the event with information about the RawSAFE launch, and the enthusiasm for it was heartening to hear.
RawSAFE Ltd is an independent company working to improve food safety standards across the fresh pet food manufacturing sector. They have developed a set of publicly available audit standards to ensure excellence in all manufacturing processes and traceability of ingredients.
They have appointed leading meat hygiene experts Eville & Jones Ltd to conduct the audits, making them truly independent and accredited manufacturers agree to both an announced, and an unannounced audit annually.
We feel confident that RawSAFE accreditation will be pivotal in our mission to educate our veterinary colleagues by giving them confidence that there are manufacturers who are making high quality prepared nutritious foods from human grade materials using excellent manufacturing practice. For further information, please check out the website www.rawsafe.com.
Free Treats
We would also like to say thank you to our Affiliates who were able to support us by sending treats for us to hand out. It was a very last minute idea, but was a wonderful success and the dogs loved them! It was great to be able to show people just some of the many alternatives available to the usual biscuits.
Thank you Natural Instinct, Paleo Ridge and Bella & Duke!
Thank you again to the team at Edition Dog that made this event such a wonderful success, and as Mark mentioned above, Edition Dog Live will return next year on the 27th August 2023 and we look forward to seeing you all there!
OUR NEXT EVENTS:
RFVS Conference – ‘How Safe is Their Food?’ 24th September 2022 Online (ticket holders can watch at anytime)
London Vet Show 17th-18th November at ExCeL London