Talking Dogs. No, Really.

Every dog-owned human believes their dog is way smarter than we generally recognize. I’ve told stories before, without shame, about being outsmarted by my dogs. But, I think I may have crossed the Rubicon, fallen down the rabbit hole, tripped the light fantastic … something.

Like many, I’ve wondered about those “word-buttons” dogs have been trained use to communicate. Thanks to some early Christmas gifts (gift cards) I decided to give them a try. There is no question my Oliver understands many, many words and is possibly the smartest dog I’ve ever had. His vocabulary includes the typical food, water, treat, outside, etc. He also clearly understands simple sentences like, “find [name of person or object]”, “wet paws”, meaning to stay on the mat until his feet are dry, “toy/ball off the bed/couch”, and on the rare occasion he is naughty, the dreaded “go to your room”.

Most animal studies say dogs understand us by following subtle or even unconscious body and contextual clues. Research into the idea that dogs can learn to “think” in words is radical and controversial. But, it’s the Holidays, I wanted to have some fun, so I got the six buttons and the mat they sit on starter kit.

The buttons came yesterday and I figured I’d start with one word, “outside”. Oliver was very interested and sat watching me, so I modeled pressing the button, my voice came out of the button, he looked at the button, then at me. So, I pressed the button again to make it say, “outside”, then immediately got up and went to the door (he follows me every time I go from one room to another) and opened the door. Oliver went out, tail wagging, I closed the door, and he ran in a circle and came back in right away.

We went back to the family room, I took his paw and depressed the button, and immediately went to the door and he went out again, tail wagging so hard his whole back end was swaying. He ran in a circle and came right back again.

Meanwhile the sibling is laughing at me, telling me how I wasted a perfectly good gift card that I might as well have thrown in the fire pit. I just shrugged, set the button on the floor in the family room, and announced “bedtime” (another word Oliver knows). As I locked up the house, I talked to Oliver – yes, I have full conversations with my dog and I choose to believe he understands and responds in his own way, hence the experiment with communicating in my way – about the buttons, which commands should I start out with, will he figure it out and most importantly, how I will know if he’s actually communicating or simply responding to a game.

I decided to explore some more videos of people training their dogs to use these types of buttons. Some were lamenting their dogs just weren’t getting the drift, others were obviously fake (four or five buttons, but each video had different words coming out of the buttons). There were also more than a few that seem to indicate the dog is initiating conversation, probably through creative or selective editing.

Then, I came across some that gave me deep pause, no pun intended, about the ultimate wisdom of teaching a dog to “talk”. But more about that later.

This morning, I’m working on notes and some writing because yes, I do have a job and a book to finish, and the house is silent as no one else is home. Oliver had food, water, pets, and had been outside a couple times, but was wandering around. As I often, sadly, have to do I said, “Oliver, I have work to do. Just chill and relax for a while”.

As God as my witness, about two minutes later, as I’m deeply focused but aware Oliver is still wandering around and not settling, I hear my own voice say “outside”. Nearly jumped out of my skin. I look into the family room and Oliver is standing next to the button, and just to make sure I got the message, while staring at me, he quite purposely pressed the button with his paw to make it say “outside” again.

I immediately got up as he trotted to the door with his back-end wagging and swaying so hard you’d think his spine was a slinky, and opened the door. I just stood there with my jaw swinging as he went to his potty area, explored something, then came back to the door to come in. Part of me is beyond thrilled, utterly convinced my special boy is a canine genius as he figured it out after one, just one! demonstration. Part of me is deeply, deeply concerned.

My reservations about the wisdom of all this revolves around questions like, “Are dogs self-aware? What happens if they are or become so? Will they be happy with their lot, limited as it is by being able to communicate but imperfectly and having little to no agency over their lives?”

These are the concerns voiced over Bunny, arguably the most famous user of these buttons, and the dog owned by the founder of one of the products. This dog has been trained to use over 100 different word-buttons to create simple sentences and ostensibly expresses rather complex and even abstract thoughts. Bunny is the subject of rigorous study and the impetus of much research, including several projects at the University of California San Diego Comparative Cognition lab.

The UCSD-CC Lab studies communication and language acquisition in humans and animals. Identifying what and how dogs understand as well as how the brain, human or animal, learns, organizes, and develops language has implications far beyond teaching your dog to tell you he prefers one brand of kibble over another.

UCSD-CC put out a call a few years ago for dogs that had been trained with these word-buttons to be part of a larger study. One of the least surprising results, to anyone who has or have ever had a dog, was individual dogs seem to have individual capacities. Here is just one of the more recent ancillary articles based on this research – “How do soundboard-trained dogs respond to human button presses? An Investigation into word comprehension”.

The point of this study  was to determine if the dogs are responding to the nonverbal, unconscious or contextual clues of their humans, or to the words themselves? Google Scholar will net scores or hundred more articles, nearly unanimously agreeing that yes, Fido can be taught to use and respond to word-buttons or other Augmentative Interspecies Communication (AIC) devices.

For those who object to this as just another instance of anthropomorphizing dogs, here’s a counterpoint. “No, Bunny the talking dog can’t really speak English…One of the issues this writer raises is the fact there are marketable products and money to be made…as he touts his book and helpfully supplies a link to purchase it.

The possibilities for enhancing the quality of life for humans is mind-boggling. Some of these products are already connected, via Wi-Fi and the internet, to cell phones, sending a text message of the command or word on the selected button. Service dogs could be trained to “call” 911 if their human charge were to fall, become ill, or incapacitated, allowing those who would otherwise be unable to live alone.

Still, I have reservations, both about the veracity of some of the claims, and the wisdom of the enterprise if the videos are true. In one, the human starts the first fire of the season in the fireplace. The dog, ostensibly spontaneously, presses “forgot” and “hot” as the human is talking about starting the fire. The human responds by saying, “You forgot the fire is hot? Yes, the fire is hot”.

In another, it appears the dog is supposedly trying to communicate about her “dreams”. That word, along with those like “forgot”, “yesterday”, and “stranger” intimate complex thoughts I cannot fathom how to communicate to a dog, much less train a dog to use. Then there is “depressed”, the one word that started my questioning the wisdom of all this.

“Is Bunny depressed?” is more than an academic question. Supposedly, yes, the dog is depressed, a thought or feeling it is claimed Bunny spontaneously expressed and for which the dog is now medicated. Why would there be a word-button for both sad and depressed? How would the subtleties of those words be differentiated to a dog?

On the other hand, as a therapist, part of me wants it to be true for the revolution it could spark in animal-assisted psychotherapy. Talk about normalizing mental health if even dogs can become, and express, depression. However, since this dog is now medicated, can the big pharma commercials, “Is your dog telling you he’s depressed? Get him FidoFun, just one tablet every day to get that tail wagging again” be far off?

In all seriousness, there is something here that is deeply troubling. Throughout history, fables have been written about what happens when a creature recognizes it’s own existence, and the consequences to that creature when it realizes it’s limitations imposed by nature. Is teaching a dog, or any animal, to communicate opening a pandora’s box where the plague released is thinking, feeling, and reasoning in a world where ignorance was bliss?

Part of me is still curious, even excited, to create more word-buttons and see what Oliver does with them. Most of me will be devastated if in doing so, I’ve reduced his quality of life. As any dog-owned human knows, our canine companions have emotional experiences that include sadness and even grief. I have no intention of even trying to teach Oliver “depressed”. The dog may or may not be capable of such a thing, but that would certainly engender my own existential crisis.

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Category: Pointless blather