Photo courtesy: Los Angeles Times 
 
Pup-lates? That’s right. The Zoom Room in L.A. is now offering pilates, on the same kind of equipment Joseph Pilates invented to help recovering war veterans regain stability, for your dog.  Mary MacVean of the Los Angeles Times writes that the studio is now offering classes where you and your pooch work on your pooches together! She admits owners are lucky to “get in 20 or so sit-ups at a time, but rarely without a break to get the dog to do its part: sitting still at the human’s feet.” Unlike we humans, the dogs are rewarded for behaving and letting their partners take their turn – at the wall, on the bar or doing sit-ups, with treats to get through the down time.  

“I do CrossFit at home, but he” — Paxton the Jack Russell — “also needs to get fit,” says Jessie Simon, one of my classmates.

“It’s a bonding experience with the dog,” says David Essex, holding Windsor, a border collie-cattle dog mix. “It is more of a workout for us, more of a patience thing for them.”

I wonder what the odds are that I could get my two dogs off the 25 dollar couch I bought at Goodwill for them to plush out on in our garage for a class at Zoom Room? How about an at-home workout? Some of their escapades do remind me of a run through an obstacle course. One of them has a new routine that he’s just deployed where he starts at the gate between the kitchen and the rest of the house, knocks that down, then jumps over it to escape into the living room, where he darts back and forth like a speed skater until I herd him back where he belongs. Now, I admit it is more circus than circuit but hey, I’m definitley getting a workout out of it.