Leora is a medical student and dog lover, living in SF. I think an alternative name for The Best Advice Show could be the weird things we do to get through the day. What's that thing for you? Give me a call at 844-935-BEST. TRANSCRIPT: ZAK: Welcome back to The Best Advice Show. Today I've got another contribution from the hotline. I don't know the advice-giver but I feel like I do after having heard her advice. It's so specific and unique and I think joyful. LEORA: Hello. I'm Leora. I'm a former museum worker, current fourth-year medical student living in San Francisco. My piece of advice is mainly for dog owners or otherwise dog adjacent people who are prone to melancholy. And the advice is to occasionally feed your dog a berry. How you feed the dog a berry is obviously up to you but my preferred method to blueberries is to use my teeth to bite the berry in half and I then spit it out and hold it between my thumb and fore-finger and then my dog, who's attention at this point is totally on the berry uses his little front-teeth to nibble away at it, bit by bit. Sometimes he'll put his paw on my hand to stabilize as he eats, which, you know, is it's own separate act of extreme cuteness. And this activity combines a few things that I think stand a chance of breaking open some, like, old bubble of serotonin hiding away in my mind. First of all, just the mere existence of berries kind of feels like a miracle...their color, their sweetness, etc. And the same goes for dogs. They're just generally so much nicer and softer than they need to be. And then the fact that dogs love berries and can eat them so gently, or at least Rudy can...my dog. Feels like it sort of belongs in a children's book which is itself a kind of salve. You know that in this moment there are also berry-eating dogs with paws gently placed on your hand. ZAK: I think an alternative name for The Best Advice Show could be the weird things we do to get through the day. What's that thing for you? Give me a call at 844-935-BEST. Oh, and you can see a picture of Leora and her dog Rudy on our Instagram page. That's @bestadviceshow. It's very cute. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.