Ross Solly does not endorse this two-year-old French Bulldog doing a yoga pose (warrior 3 approximation, if you must know) – especially if you post it to social media. Photo: Ben Grantham.
Regular readers will be aware my relationship with social media is frosty at best.
I don’t even pretend to understand its point, much less why it is so attractive to so many people. Previously I have described various forms of social media as the devil incarnate, the root of all the problems facing the world today.
Social media doesn’t understand me, either.
It keeps trying to lure me in with promises of new friends, new opportunities to share my life experiences, and telling me which posts I will be interested in. But, of course, they have no idea.
I know I’m in the minority.
This week I learned for the first time of a new phenomenon, except that it turns out it’s not that new, sweeping the internet.
Puppy Yoga. I kid you not. It’s a thing. Huge in the UK and very popular in Australia, apparently.
Basically, it involves people doing yoga with pups. Most sensible people know pups couldn’t give a fig about yoga. All they want to do is sleep, eat remote controls and urinate in places where they shouldn’t.
But here they are, being used as props by narcissists desperate for admiration, likes and shares on social media. (Yes, I know, some people do yoga with their pups because it soothes their stress and helps them relax, but a good bubble bath can often produce the same results.)
Anyway, this craze took off around the world, or went “viral” as they say, as people used their pups, or if they didn’t have their own pups, commandeered other people’s pups to be part of their show.
Which was all well and good until someone finally took a look at how this craze was affecting the pups. And, not surprisingly, it was not good.
Pups don’t like being awake for long periods of time. They don’t like being in warm rooms with no water (they were denied water because the people doing the yoga didn’t want the pups urinating in their yoga rooms).
No greater authority than the Kennel Club, the UK’s largest dog health and welfare organisation, and the RSPCA blew the whistle this month on this nonsense known as puppy yoga. The craze, much loved by social media “influencers”, is putting dogs at serious risk of harm.
Pups were being denied access to water, sleep and were being “worked” for hours at a time. The Kennel Club and the RSPCA want a ban on puppy yoga.
This is where social media has taken us: crazed people have lost sight completely of how their actions and their dreams of becoming internet darlings can have serious consequences.
There will be much wailing and gnashing of teeth from those who, hopefully, will soon be frowned upon for using pups as props. And, of course, you can guarantee another craze will replace it. Peacock yoga, anyone?
If you want to make a difference, stop liking and sharing this rubbish. They don’t see the damage they are doing, but you do.
Original Article published by Ross Solly on Riotact.
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