Jo Otton

In 2006 I achieved my degree in Animal Management which helped me to gain a job in 2007 at Hearing Dogs for Deaf People, which is a registered Assistance Dog charity under ADUK. For the first 5 years I worked in the Welfare team, including as a Team Leader, then moved to the Training team as a Dog Trainer for 7 years. My role in the Charity now is to oversee staff as they work with their dogs in their final stage of training once paired with their Deaf Partner.

Every role that I’ve worked in since leaving school has involved working with people and my present job includes working with people with hearing loss to teach them how to work with their new Hearing Dog and start off their partnership together. Additionally, over the years I’ve also been responsible for training volunteers and staff in various subjects relating to dogs.

I really enjoy working with people and their dogs, so I applied to Puppy School and completed my training for this in 2005 and started running classes in 2006. Puppy School is an amazing support network with brilliant people which also continually trains their tutors to keep us up to date with developing techniques. I am a registered Animal Training Instructor with the Animal Behaviour Training Council. This means that I must keep up to date with current dog training techniques and I only use positive reward based training.

Keeping current with my Continuing Professional Development works well for me as I enjoy learning and I don’t think you can ever know everything as we are always finding improved ways to work and connect with our canine friends. Every person and dog I work with are individuals which is the approach I take when supporting them. As I have a background in Welfare as well as training and behaviour, I like to look at a dog in more of a holistic way, looking at the big picture for them in order to support them and their person.