Have you heard of Yoga for your furry friends?

A group of animal enthusiasts held a fun and interactive doggy yoga demonstration for pet owners.

Jean Peterson, one of the doggy yoga instructors and founder of Bright Paws, explained that doggy yoga helps dogs explore healthy movement in a positive, fun, and safe way while encouraging calmness, mindfulness and focus. This helps improve your dog’s muscle strength, body awareness, flexibility and balance.

“By doing this, we can help improve our dogs’ physical strength and resilience, keeping them happily mobile for longer and delaying the onset of age-related conditions such as arthritis,” explained Jean. She brought her Siberian husky rescue Digger along to demonstrate the various yoga poses and benefits.

Along with Jean and Digger, Adam J Lax from S.C.A.R Canine Training and Behaviour and his Alaskan malamute Nanook also demonstrated the different yoga poses and techniques to the crowd.

Some of those benefits include improved quality of life through improved mobility, delayed onset of symptoms of ageing, promoted longevity, assistance in arthritis management, help with improved body awareness and balance as well as strength and flexibility. Doggy yoga is also beneficial in terms of injury prevention and rehabilitation, canine calmness, and is great for reactive dogs, and improves the ability to relax which reduces stress and anxiety.

“This truly is a brilliant body and brain exercise, it improves cognitive function as well as physical strength which contributes to a longer, healthier life for our beloved pets. It is ideal for puppies as it builds confidence, and body awareness and is a great form of mental and physical enrichment and exercise,” added Jean, explaining that it helps teach your puppy how to learn new things and strengthens your bond with your puppy.

Doggy yoga is for all ages and all breeds of dogs and can be done at home or in class.