Christina Hunger is a professional speech therapist and owner of a dog named Stella. Who would have thought that her specialty would help the girl in raising her pet?
Surprisingly, Christina managed to teach Stella to talk. In this, she was helped by a special device with buttons on which various words and phrases are written.
Of course, learning was not easy. For the dog to remember the words and get used to the device, Christina and her boyfriend Jake had to spend 16 months on it.
By this time, Stella could already reproduce 29 words, and a year later the couple managed to teach the dog 11 more commands.
The device with which Stella learned to “speak” is a panel with sound buttons. A specific command is assigned to each of these buttons, for example, “play”, “eat”, “walk” and so on. To express some desire or feeling, the dog must press the corresponding button.
In order for Stella to learn to understand the mechanism of this device, the owner did the following: every time Christina fed the dog, she pressed the “food” button, and before going for a walk – the “walk” button.
She did the same with the rest of the orders. Of course, Christina always used the panel in front of the dog so that she understood how it worked. Over time, the girl began to teach the dog to press the buttons herself.
Now Stella does a great job with the device and expresses her emotions by pressing the buttons. In addition, she understands the words of the owners and reacts to them using the panel.
There are even whole dialogues between the dog and the owners. For example, when Stella wants to take a walk, she presses the appropriate button. Hearing approval from Christina, the dog presses the “happy” button.
Christina Hunger is very glad that we crowned her experiment with success, but she does not intend to stop there.
Now she plans to continue teaching Stella, and in the future to prepare special courses for other dogs.
