The Joy of Doing Yoga with Dogs

Yesterday I got to be in a puppy pile.

Well, sort of. I was doing yoga at a friend’s house. She has a pit bull and two FrenchBos. Only one of the little dogs is still young enough to act like a puppy still. So maybe a better description instead of puppy pile is dognado.

I chose to do yoga in front of the fireplace. I knew the dogs, and possibly the cats, would be underfoot, and I decided I’d rather have that and the warmth and the company rather than go to another room and close the door.

The dogs were delightful. They liked being close to me. Even when they weren’t interacting with me directly, they liked to be near me. Sometimes I had a perfect line of dogs (and one cat) boxing me in, defining my yoga space.

What surprised me the most is just how much the little ones liked to lick me. My hands, my elbows, my feet — anything they could reach. I suppose between the sweat from my yoga and the cacao butter left on my skin from my bath the day before, I was especially tasty.

The first downward dog I did, they were all over my ears and face. It surprised me how intense it was to be licked in stereo by two little dogs with smushed faces making snuffling whuffling alien sounds in my ear.

I laughed so hard. It was one of those sessions of deep belly laughing where tears came out of my eyes and a deep feeling of well-being and joy infused me.

Life isn’t always easy. Just 24 hours earlier, I had cried for a different reason when I lowered my aching and bruised body into the bath after a hard week of work. Being in front of a fire, getting licked by adorable alien dogs, and laughing out of pure joy was just the medicine I needed. I felt like I had won the lottery.

After my yoga was finished, we all got to cuddle on the couch together for hours. I was in oxytocin-induced bliss.

More and more dogs are getting called service dogs, even when they aren’t a seeing-eye dog or have similar special training, and it’s true — dogs provide an amazing service for our emotional well-being, just by being the loving, engaging creatures they are. I am so grateful that my ancestors made friends with the ancestors of those dogs, so that all these thousands of years later we could have a play date.