What would dogs say if they could talk? Speech pathologist Christina Hunger, MA, CCC-SLP was determined to find out. Now, her 18-month-old dog Stella knows 29 words and can even form phrases.
Hunger, 26, taught her pup to use a special version of an Augmentative and Alternative Communication system. These kinds of devices are usually used with non-verbal children who can push one of the many icons representing different words in order to express what they want or think. When kids press the button, the machine says the word which others can understand.
Hunger and her fiance got a dog last year. She immediately thought about how she can teach the pup to use a similar device to “talk” by pressing the buttons. So, Hunger wanted to teach Stella how to use an AAC when she was just 8 weeks old.
There are many ways of communicating, including gestures, facial expressions, and writing. That means humans don’t really need to say words to express themselves.
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Dogs, on the other hand, have different ways of communication methods such as barking, growling, and jumping. sighing, etc. So Hunger wanted to find out what would happen if dogs have access to the words people say to them on a daily basis.
Dogs can receive and respond to verbal commands from humans. As a result, Hunger wanted to test the theory that dogs can communicate back with the same words via the ACC system.
Hunger and her fiancee Jake started training Stella with the word outside, which all dogs recognize. Then, they built a button that said the word out loud when it was pushed. Every time they said the word“outside” and let Stella out, the pair would press the button. They were hoping that the dog would learn so she could press it whenever she wanted to go outside.
Eventually, Stella learned how to use the buttons. She learned other words as well such as eat, play, water, no, walk, bye, and love you.
After several weeks, Stella learned to use the buttons to comment on situations instead of just requesting things. She even learned how to create phrases out of the words.
Hunger wants to discover how far she can go with dog communication. She even set up a website and Instagram account where she shares updates on Stella’s journey.
