CLARKSVILLE, TN (CLARKSVILLE NOW) – The pandemic has given everyone an elevated need for normalcy, and the last place you’d expect to find that would be goat yoga. However, two ladies recognized a need in Clarksville, and they are filling it.
Ashley Wallace with Scape Goat Farms said this venture has been a year in the making. “We would bring our goats to all of our vendor shows, and everybody always flocked to the baby goats,” she said.
Wallace said this was a way to incorporate time with goats without people having to visit their farms. They started classes in early April.
“We thought it would be a good way for others to enjoy the therapy of goats,” Heather Curtis with Our Blessed Homestead told Clarksville Now.
“We always have a full group,” Wallace said. “We have some who will come and hold a baby goat the entire time, and then some who will do yoga and love on a baby goat later.”
This wasn’t the first time they had heard of goat yoga, but they said they knew a way to improve it. “I knew people who were going to goat yoga and getting pooped on, so we put diapers on them so that people don’t have to worry about a mess,” Curtis said.
“I never imagined myself doing this,” she said.
She didn’t have any experience with goats prior to moving back to Kentucky four years ago. “I found this little baby goat who was 2 days old, and he was a bottle baby and needed a home, so we got him. His name is Vincent van Goat.”
Our Blessed Homestead has come a long way since Vincent van Goat; they now own over 20 goats.
“I think everybody has been stuck at home for so long that they are just eager to be with some people again, and why not people and baby goats?” Wallace said.
Tori Rhodes, one of the regular participants, said this wasn’t something she expected to like.
“I’m not a yoga person,” Rhodes said. “The goat was an incentive because I thought it’d be fun to have the goats jump on you, and then I figured out that I actually liked the yoga, too.”
They are hosting goat yoga on various dates at Respawn Coffee Company, the Upstairs Emporium, and the Hopkinsville Brewing Company. You can get tickets or learn more about goat yoga here. They do ask everyone to follow the disease prevention guidelines of the facilities they use.