Did I just hear you say Canine Pilates?

"Did I just hear you say Canine Pilates?" Yes, that was my reaction last week when Masala (my 13 year old wirehaired dachshund diva extraordinaire pictured here) went to see the Doggy Orthopedist. As many of you know, Masala is the "mini" love of my life, what some might call my soul dog.

She is a client of Dr Andrew Sams, http://andrewsamsclinic.com/who is not only an extraordinary doctor, but also a nice guy. He checked her out, pronounced her in fine shape and attributed her slowing down to her age. And he had a solution to the slight problem with her spine (after all she is a doxie!) - rest and then rehab. Resting we had done for the last 6-8 weeks, and now it was time for rehab.

So off we went -- to see Sarah Johnson, his rehab specialist. Sarah has a Masters in Canine Rehab and used to be a a pilates teacher in a previous life. And she is the one that suggested doing Pilates and related exercises with Masala to build up her core. Now, I have been trying to build up my core as well, so I thought "hurray, we can do this together", and had visions of rebonding over sweaty sessions at the Pilates Studio. I even had quasi-matching outfits picked out for us.

The reality thankfully (and I can just hear my husband thanking the 330,000 Indian Gods that he does not even believe in!) turned out to be a little bit different. It was determined that Masala is too little (she is only 9 lbs, and her legs are barely 3 inches tall) to do most of the exercises on the "Canine Pilates DVD" that Sarah has put together. Same with the equipment in her exercise studio. Necessity being the mother of invention, we had to improvise. First Masala was made to walk around on exercise mats of different thicknesses and densities, and with different levels of squishiness. Then she had to walk all over, and balance herself on, a wobble-board http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000G0ON2U, fitness disks of different heights

http://www.amazon.com/Natural-Fitness-Balance-Disc-Rock/dp/B000OENSWY, and lastly the BOSU https://www.bosu.com/scripts/cgiip.exe/WService=bosu/story.html.

(Disclaimer: I am not connected to the sale of these in any way :))

Funny, my butt hardly fits on the BOSU, and here she was walking around on it! And whereas I can barely balance myself on any of these objects, Masala walked around on them like Nadia Comaneci on the balance beams. She pranced around like she belonged there and had been practising as long as Nadia.

We concluded the session with a nice relaxing massage for Masala as Sarah showed me how to do this at home. And guess what, just like me, Masala is only able to partially relax on the massage table. As she worked on Masala, Sarah told me "Wow, this little one has some really well muscled hamstrings!" Ummm, swell! I have been trying to build up my hamstrings forever, but they are still puny shrivelled little twigs, while my quads have begun to look more like miniature tree trunks. And Masala has nice hamstrings without even trying? But then nobody ever said life was fair, did they?