Couples Massage With a Pet? Spas Around the World Are Making It a Reality

At our own treatment, I felt that. At one point during the session, the masseuse who was working on me started to knead my tense shoulders, and while normally I’d be focused on the pain that comes with relieving troublesome knots, this time I was rubbing Sophie’s ears, passing that healing energy on.

“We’re electromagnetic beings: everything we do involves energy,” bodyworker Goldstein explains. Anyone with a dog knows how easily a pet can pick up on the way we feel, sometimes before we’re even aware that we’re feeling anything specific at all. This canine intuition is one of the major pluses of dog companionship: It’s proof of the infinite depths of love of which only dogs seem capable.

Bringing that relationship into a therapeutic session designed to heal can be highly effective. “The one thing that loves you unconditionally is on the table with you,” Goldstein says, explaining how this eases the client into a deeper state of relaxation. “That parasympathetic response…that’s when the body heals. So if you’re coming in for pain or trauma, now you’re in a state where you’re more ready for that healing.”

Perhaps that explains the uptick in wellness services designed to include dogs, from L.A.’s YogaForce, which offers “doga,” to the Hotel DeLuxe in Portland, Oregon, which has created a proper English afternoon tea just for guests and their dogs. And while treatments like the one I did at Paws Up—which has been doing this for more than 13 years—are still niche, the trend appears to be gaining traction. Last year Ubika Spa in Sydney, Australia, ran a successful one-day event with human-dog couples massages, while Hand2Paws, a house-call service in California’s Orange County, has a Canine & Companion Massage package on its menu of predominantly dog-focused massage services.

Dog massage—as in, just the dog receiving a treatment—has risen in popularity over the past few years, according to Greenstein. “Veterinary researchers are focusing more attention on its potential benefits: altering levels of key neurotransmitters (like dopamine and serotonin), improving blood flow to tissues, reducing muscle spasms, and increasing flexibility,” as just a few examples. She says performing a massage on your own dog can help your human-pet bond, with the physical contact “increasing trust, and decreasing anxiety and fearfulness.”

Had I known this before my couples massage with Sophie, maybe I would have been less surprised to see her instantly relax under the hands of our masseuse. My dog is very sweet and loving but is deeply loyal to me, and she typically takes a long time to move beyond ambivalence about other people, let alone seek their affection. But Goldstein wasn’t surprised to hear about Sophie’s shift in behavior. “If the client has a nervous or anxious demeanor, the bodywork I facilitate can have a huge impact on the client, and you can see the pet settle down right along with their owner. So if the owner is calm and happy, that pet is calm and happy.”

And it was true: Sophie and I departed our massage session relaxed. Her initial angst from being locked in a hot, strange room abated as soon as I settled in for my massage, allowing her to reap the full benefits of the experience when her turn came up. That night she seemed more relaxed than she had in months. Is her relationship with her “little brother” perfect? Not quite. But as time goes on, I can feel the tension start to melt.

Ali Wunderman is a freelance writer, wildlife photographer, and unabashed lover of all things canine. Originally from San Francisco, she has since traded in skyscrapers for the big skies of Montana, alongside her husband, Michael, and their two very cute dogs, Sophie and Vinny.

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