The University of Maryland’s Fidos for Freedom Club hosted five puppy yoga classes on Saturday with the future service dogs that are being trained this semester.
Fidos for Freedom is a club that is training puppies to work as service dogs. The club hosts multiple events a semester. Some previous events include on-campus training sessions, Target runs, a ‘Man’s Best Friend’ listening party and, of course, puppy yoga.
Each session was 30 minutes long, ending with a few extra minutes to play with the puppies.
“We try to keep it pretty simple so people can have the opportunity to play with the dogs,” said junior bioengineering major Farah Abdrabou.
Abdrabou is a yoga instructor at Eppley Recreation Center who led the puppy yoga classes.
Another fun element of the yoga class was the themed yoga sequences that were centered around the “puppy” part of puppy yoga.
“We tried to do puppy, we tried to do, obviously, down dog, up dog and three legged dog,” said Abdrabou.
The puppies being trained this semester are Tank, Pip, Gem and Jackie. Both Tank and Pip are new this semester, while Gem and Jackie were on campus last semester. Gem and Jackie are black labradores, Tank is a yellow labrador and Pip is an Australian shepherd.
Student participants had positive experiences, finding the event fun and relaxing.
“I think it’s a great way for them to raise awareness of their club and I obviously love puppies and yoga, so it was a great time,” said senior general biology major Kaavya Suresh.
The students who train the puppies are referred to as raisers, and each dog has three raisers. The raisers enjoyed puppy yoga as well.
“It is great for everybody here on campus to just let loose and just relax, so stressful lately. Also, it’s really great for the dogs for socializing because they are going to be service dogs,” said junior animal science major Kylie Waga. “So they’re always going to be in a public setting, so getting this kind of exposure of just people always coming in and out, it’s just really great for them as well.”
Waga is raising Tank this semester.
While puppy yoga was a great way to de-stress before the end of the semester, it highlighted the club’s larger goal of raising service dogs through socialization and campus involvement. Students looking to get involved with Fidos for Freedom can find the club at the first look fair in the fall and second look fair in the spring.