Anxiety wraps and pressure garments for dogs have become popular for noise phobia and anxiety management, with mixed evidence supporting their use.
Anxiety wraps occupy an interesting position in the evidence hierarchy for dog welfare interventions: not robustly supported by large controlled trials, but with some evidence of benefit, minimal risk of harm, and strong owner-reported efficacy in individual cases. For dogs with noise phobia or generalized anxiety, any safe tool that reduces acute distress has welfare value even without strong average effect sizes. The welfare risk of dismissing all interventions with imperfect evidence is that dogs remain untreated. Anxiety wraps are best understood as one tool in an integrated approach including behavior modification, environmental management, and veterinary assessment.