Atlanta Humane Society spotlights Puppy Yoga with adoptable pups, mimosas

Atlanta Humane Society turned Puppy Yoga: Puppies in Bloom into a Saturday outing built for people who wanted more than a mat and a stretch. The class ran from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. at Atlanta Humane Society-Atlanta, 1551 Perry Boulevard NW in Atlanta, and the draw was as much the adoption angle as the yoga itself.

The shelter paired adoptable puppies with a post-class mimosa bar, light bites and a build-your-own bouquet station, giving the event a celebratory finish that felt closer to a community gathering than a standard studio session. Atlanta Humane Society positioned the experience as a chance to get involved, meet a possible new family member and enjoy what it described as a puppy-kisses-included outing. The setup made the event easy to read at a glance: come for the class, stay for the social hour, and leave with a stronger connection to the animals the shelter is trying to place.

That framing fits the organization’s broader mission. Atlanta Humane Society describes itself as a no-kill shelter that provides sheltering and adoption, veterinary care and community outreach to the Atlanta metro. The nonprofit says it delivers more than 120,000 direct points of care each year and helps find more than 5,000 animals loving homes annually, part of a history that stretches back more than 150 years. Its history page says Captain Joseph Burke and a group of friends founded the Atlanta Humane Society and Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals with an original focus on women, children and animals.

Puppy Yoga: Puppies in Bloom also sat alongside other shelter programming, including a Roswell vaccine clinic and a dog adoption event in Marietta, reinforcing that this was one stop in a larger calendar of neighborhood-facing work. Atlanta Humane Society has used puppy yoga before, including a January 24 class taught by certified instructor Maya Nenova of Evolation and a March 22 event that was listed at $40 and said all ticket sales benefited the animals of Atlanta Humane Society.

That history matters because puppy yoga has drawn scrutiny in other settings over whether repeated handling can affect puppies’ rest, socialization and care. At Atlanta Humane Society, though, the format was folded into a shelter-based adoption and fundraising model, not a standalone novelty. The result was a puppy yoga event that leaned hard into community, with adoptable dogs, mimosas and bouquets turning the room into a softer path toward giving an animal a home.