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Happier with Gretchen Rubin

Little Happier: Why You Shouldn’t Comfort a Scared Puppy

Happier with Gretchen Rubin

Lemonada Media

Health & Fitness, Education, Self-improvement

4.713.2K Ratings

🗓️ 18 May 2026

⏱️ 3 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

A trainer gave us good advice about our new puppy, Taffy: sometimes, a casual attitude is more calming than the most earnest reassurance. Get in touch: podcast@gretchenrubin.com Visit Gretchen's website to learn more about Gretchen's best-selling books, products from The Happiness Project Collection, and the Happier app. Find the transcript for this episode on the episode details page in the Apple Podcasts app.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Lemonada.

0:06.2

Summer. It's when we share more time, more memories, and more photos. And at AT&T, the iPhone

0:12.7

17 Pro is your summer essential. It's center stage, front camera, auto-adjusts the frame to fit

0:19.6

everyone into group selfies. You don't even have to

0:22.4

turn your phone. And AT&T makes sharing those picks with everyone easy. Right now at AT&T, ask how you can

0:29.5

get iPhone 17 Pro on them with eligible iPhone trade-in, any condition. Requires trade-in of

0:36.4

iPhone 15-plus or higher, excludes iPhone 16E and 17E.

0:41.3

Requires eligible plan. Terms and restrictions apply. Subject to change. Visit ATT.com slash iPhone or

0:48.1

visit an AT&T store for details. I'm Gretchen Rubin and this is a little happier. I'm always interested in examples of

0:59.2

unintended consequences. For instance, I love this story, which I suspected was a prokrafal,

1:05.7

but apparently is really true. Pickpockets tend to hang out near beware of pickpockets signs. Because it turns out

1:14.2

when people see a sign on the street or in the subway that reminds them to beware of pickpockets,

1:19.8

the first thing they do is to check their pockets, their purses, their watches, their jewelry

1:23.9

to make sure that their most valuable possessions are still safe. And in this way,

1:29.3

they signal to pick pockets exactly where their valuables can be found. Along the same lines,

1:36.2

it turns out that the classic cornfield scarecrow actually attracts birds, because birds learn

1:42.9

that a scarecrow is a sign of ample food.

1:46.7

Here's an example of unintended, even ironic consequences that my husband, Jamie and I were

1:52.6

warned about about our puppy Taffy. Just one year ago, we got our puppy Taffy and we love having

2:00.3

taffy and having two dogs. When we brought, Taffy, and we love having Taffy and having two dogs.

2:02.4

When we brought Little Taffy home, one big challenge for her was to get accustomed to New York City, with its noise and its bustle.

2:11.4

For a puppy, it can be hard to walk down a sidewalk amongst the strollers, bikes, wheelchairs, pedestrians, and other dogs with all the

...

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