Wellness entrepreneurs Francesca Albo and Lea Burbidge Izquierdo have take downward dog to a whole new level. They are the co-founders of Puppy Sphere, a yoga class company with a special endorphin-boosting extra: puppies! Entrepreneur spoke with the founders as their business races to keep up with demand throughout North America. Responses have been edited for length and clarity.

Can you give us the elevator pitch for Puppy Sphere?
Albo: There are so many mood-boosting benefits of animal therapy, and we are bringing that gentle boost to people with our bestselling class, Puppy Yoga. We host 14,000 people a month in that class across all of our locations. We're in 12 cities now. Lea and I fully bootstrapped this business and built it up, so quite a lot of love and labor went into building the startup.

Burbidge Izquierdo: It's our absolute passionate dream.

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How did you get the idea for it?
Albo: It started with Lea's and my mental health journeys. We were both working corporate jobs before we knew each other. I lost all of my love for the biotech business I was working in. I was stuck in a cubicle and didn't feel happy. I learned how much I cared about mental health and wanted to do something more pursuant to that angle, but I didn't know what I was going to get into yet. Then I met Lea at a dog park. We were both strolling our dogs, and her dog was so cute. I had to snuggle it, and we ended up becoming best friends. She was unhappy with her corporate job as well, and we both had a string of failed

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