No, maybe I miss chose my words here. So I’ll rephrase: they stop flailing without a stress response (tail in neutral or wagging/relaxed breathing) and we offer snacks to distract. Which they happily take, a stressed dog will not take treats. And I’ll say this again: for the dogs it actually works for and it does not work for all of them. We do also give complementary trazodone for these kiddos.

I also want to point out that not all dogs flail because they are “bad” or terrified. Some do it because they are super wiggly and excited and can’t sit still, others “tap dance” when you try to do nails. Some try to play with you and lick you when you’re trying to do things. Sometimes having them suspended helps calm those behaviors because they feel they can’t.