Sit Stay Squat

Let’s get dog-gone physical. A fun way to get pets into shape

With that tradition of making New Year’s resolutions just around the corner, most of us opt for the usual pledges, from making more family time to losing a few pounds. In the case of the latter, there might be a few four-legged household occupants in need of some bodily improvement as well. And that’s where Sarah Keller comes in.

Keller is a fitness instructor, a certified massage therapist, and more recently, a corrective exercise specialist with a particular focus on dogs, although she has a few credentials to handle cats as well. What she offers clients via her business, Sit Stay Squat, is a series of programs to get household pets into tip-top shape.

“It sounds like a silly job, but there’s actually a lot more science behind it. It’s about understanding what a dog should look like and there will be some variances in the breeds. A dachshund is obviously going to look different than a German shepherd.

Sarah Keller

Keller performs workouts with the dogs to help them lose weight, improve their posture and move better with a series of exercises she’s developed. She’s even incorporated yoga and stretches in those routines, all designed to make the activity more enjoyable for the animals and their owners.

“We keep it really simple for the exercises, with the human and the dog,” added Keller. “I’m a positive reinforcer with the trainers, and I give the dog rewards for participating in these exercises. That keeps the dog wanting to take part in the exercises and keeps it nice and fun for them.”

Anyone who sees Keller in action might be amused over how she gets those canines to jump, crawl, and circle around her, but she’s also applying years of study to work for her. She has certifications in such areas as body work and fitness training for both canines and felines, with additional backgrounds in such disciplines as pet massage, kinesiology, first aid, and even paw targeting.

With those educational tools at her disposal, Keller evaluates each animal according to posture, any movement inefficiencies in its gait, and which muscles are tight or weak. Using that criteria and any other findings she comes across in her examination, Keller will customize an exercise program to improve its physical fitness and reduce the risk of injuries
and joint stress.

When handling the pet, she looks for ways to entice it to perform the exercises in a fashion that’s agreeable to the animal.

“I will use my body mechanics to encourage a dog to move a certain way. If they follow it the way I was hoping they would, I give them a little reward for that, to encourage the dog to continue participating with me.”

Sarah Keller

Keller also doesn’t believe that some breeds are more challenging to exercise.

–

–

“Dogs who have had some prior training are a bit easier to work with, but I work with dogs all the time that have no prior experience and they do extremely well,” she noted. “I wouldn’t say there are breeds that are harder to work with than others. It just kind of depends on the individual dog and how motivated they are to come and play around with us.”

Keller first came up with the idea for Sit Stay Squat when she was looking for a way to exercise with her dog, that would otherwise be cooped up in the home while she was working out at the gym. She boned up on the academics necessary to make her venture a reality and set up an office in St. Albert. When the pandemic hit, Keller closed up shop and shifted her operations online. These days, she has maintained the videoconference component of her business and visits the rest of her clientele in their homes.

Keller also works with professional performance dogs to keep them in shape and takes referrals from dog trainers and veterinarians. She also gets clients whose pets are recovering from surgery or are concerned with how their animals are moving or looking. But a lot of folks enlist her services to find a fun way to bond with their pets. Regardless of the motives of her clients, there’s no doubt that the quadrupedal recipients are getting a kick out of the program.

Noted Keller, “It’s pretty obvious when you watch them, how much fun the dogs are having, and how much they want to keep doing the exercises.” t8n

Sit Stay Squat

780-718-9893

[email protected]

For more information:
sitstaysquat.ca