this works because cheetahs are actually fairly social animals, and they look to members of their group for context on how worried they should be about any given Situation. but since cheetahs are also nervous social animals, they can work each other into an anxiety spiral pretty easily over things like “being in an enclosed habitat” and “there’s a guy over there”.
so by introducing a dog as a member of the group, the cheetahs will now look to the dog for context clues on how worried they should be! and the dog Is Not Worried At All, Thanks, so the cheetahs think everything must be chill even if they were personally unsure about it, and they stop being so freaked out about literally everything.