Adventures in Canine AAC: Why I Took Away the “Hungry” and “Cookie” Buttons
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If you have ever considered teaching your dog to talk using canine AAC, grab a set of word buttons for dogs and give it a try!
At this point, we have all seen the videos of the “talking” dogs. Although Christina Hunger has been writing about using AAC buttons for her dog for years, the advent of Tik Tok brought canine AAC to the masses. Suddenly, everyone wanted to try.
When I learned about Hunger’s work with her dog a few years ago, I knew that someday I would replicate her experiment with my dog. After all, I’m a language nerd; there was no way I could resist the temptation of improving communication with Starsky. I just needed to wait until we had stopped moving around so much.
Once it was finally my time to try, I started by giving Starsky an “outside” button. It took him about two weeks to figure out how to press the “outside” button. From there, I added three more – hungry, cookie, and bedtime – to help him learn to differentiate the buttons’ meanings. Because Starsky is a hound dog and incredibly food motivated, I thought that if I included “hungry” for meals and “cookie” for treats, he would pick up on pushing the buttons faster and quickly learn to differentiate the buttons’ meanings.
To some extent, this worked! Hungry and cookie quickly became Starsky’s favorite buttons and he pushed them frequently. He differentiated the food-related buttons from the others, which he still used at contextually-appropriate times.
But pretty soon, I noticed that Starsky was becoming obsessed with “hungry” and “cookie.” It was also becoming very annoying to get up and give him treats so many times a day, or to try to explain to him that it was not mealtime.
So of course, I took to the internet. Although I had done a fair amount of research before starting, I had missed a crucial detail. As it turned out, Christina Hunger specifically recommends not starting with food-related buttons for food-motivated dogs. If you do, you run the risk that your dog learns that the button is merely a trick to get cookies – not a method of communication.
Although I had no doubt that Starsky understood that the buttons were a communication tool – after all, he frequently used “outside” and “bedtime” appropriately – I started to wonder whether the food buttons were hindering his AAC progress. After joining a Facebook group dedicated to canine and feline AAC experimentation, I learned that many others had had the same experience. Starsky was not alone in becoming anxious and obsessed with his food buttons!
So although there are some ethical considerations with giving a creature a voice and then subsequently removing or limiting that voice, I decided that Starsky was not really a candidate for food-related buttons and decided to remove them from rotation. He did have an initial regression in his use of the AAC buttons, but after a few weeks, had begun using them consistently again.
The obsession with the buttons was gone. Instead he used his buttons more appropriately, and as he adapted to not having food-related buttons, he seemed to have an even stronger understanding of the others.
Removing the food buttons also allowed me to better observe his “natural” communication style. Because I was focusing more on his body language and other communication tools, I was able to notice which concepts he was frequently communicating to me. Those observations dictated which buttons I added next.
For example, I noticed that he howled or scratched at the bathroom door when his water bowl was empty. (Why the bathroom? Who knows. Hounds are weird. Probably something to do with loving fresh toilet water…) I added a water button and he picked up how to use very quickly. He even started using his water button in novel ways. On more than one occasion, he repeatedly pressed his water button even when the bowl was full and he was right next to it. One of the first few times he did that, I thought to add ice to his bowl. He immediately started drinking. Water didn’t just mean more water – it also meant that he wanted colder water!
I also noticed that removing the food-related buttons reduced his anxiety. It seems that having the ability to demand treats was too much power for Starsky to handle, and the anticipation of a treat whenever he wanted was too exciting.
Months later, I added the cookie button back temporarily. Ginsburg, my Golden Retriever puppy, has not taken to the buttons as easily as Starsky did. I wanted to experiment and see if adding a treat button back into rotation would help her understand that she could indecently use the buttons to express her needs and wants, rather than just watching me press them.
Ginsburg did not make the connection with the new treat button – but she didn’t really have much of a chance. The new cookie button lasted maybe four days before I removed it again.
Starsky started obsessing over the cookie button once again, pressing it multiple times per hour. I noticed that obsession increasing and his general stress level going up. His behavior got worse in other contexts too. He began resisting my cues much more than normal. He is always somewhat over-alert while on leash, but that alertness and even mild reactivity increased. Just a few days with a new cookie button was more than enough to significantly affect his mental state.
Within two days of removing the new cookie button, Starsky’s stress levels went down. He was back to being my normal stubborn hound dog, not this extra naughty and stressed one! I was fascinated to realize that that much communicative power was too much for him – and of course felt a bit guilty for reintroducing it, too. The last thing I want to do is put any extra stress on my senior hound dog.
There are many similarities in canine and human communication, far more than the general public realizes. Reading Christina Hunger’s new book, When Stella Learned to Talk, was certainly eye opening about the extent of the communicative similarities between dogs and people.
But this seems to me like a fundamental difference between human and canine emotion and communication. Although it has been observed that talking dogs’ language use changes with their emotional state, this increased stress from having too much access to communication seems uniquely canine. I’m just a layperson though and not a linguistic expert, so you can bet that if I ever have the opportunity to ask Hunger herself about this experience, I will be! And if you are a linguistic expert and have some insight into this phenomenon I observed with Starsky, please email me!
TLDR: I do not recommend anyone start canine AAC with food-related buttons. Even if your dog isn’t as food motivated as Starsky, there still seems to be a risk that the button would become a trick and not true communication. And I especially do not recommend starting with a food button for food motivated dogs because it has the potential for other behavioral effects that aren’t pleasant for you or your pup!
All that said, I have loved our journey using AAC buttons for dogs. Starsky especially seems to enjoy the increased specificity when communicating with me, and Ginsburg went from not really understanding potty training to almost fully trained in about 48 hours thanks to a breakthrough with the “outside” button. I have learned so much about language and communication, and I find interspecies communication fascinating. If you have ever considered teaching your dog to talk using canine AAC, grab a set of word buttons for dogs and give it a try!
