There are dogs who are born and trained to be support dogs to help people. They can be service dogs and they can also be therapy dogs. But in this story, you would find out that support dogs do not help only people – they can also help other animals.
A zoo has seen the importance of support dogs and so they asked them to help a cheetah. Most cheetahs can be shy. That is why the management of the zoo decided to bring in some help to help the cheetahs get out of their shell.
A cheetah looks very elegant and royal. Despite that, they can be quite the anxious creature. They find it hard to socialize with others. According to vets, a cheetah’s anxiety can actually make them unable to mate which is not a good thing since they are endangered. Thus, the zoo decided that these animals need help.
This zoo has seen the help that support dogs can give to cheetahs and so they bring in support dogs for this purpose. The cheetahs need to overcome their anxiety so that they would not die from extinction and the dogs are there to help them with that. Usually, zoos bring in support dogs that are dominant over the cheetah.
Zookeepers have seen that when they pair a dog with a cheetah, the cheetah usually copies how the dog behaves. The dog becomes a model for the cheetah. Support dogs are usually happy and cheerful and are pretty confident and these are good behaviors that the cheetah can copy. These should also help the cheetah mate and breed.
The number of zoos seeing the help that dogs can give to cheetahs have been growing. Thus, support dogs are now being trained not just to help humans but also help other animals like cheetahs.
Source: Did You Know Animals ?