How Stella Learned to Talk: The groundbreaking story of the world鈥檚 first talking dog
WHEN Stella, a chocolate brown dog, began moving around the house, Christina Hunger realised her dog was unusual. The 8-week-old puppy acted like the children that Hunger, a speech-language pathologist, worked with. 鈥淪he was communicating how toddlers communicate right before they start saying words,鈥� she writes in How Stella Learned to Talk, her book about her experiences with the dog.
Hunger asked a simple question: if dogs can understand words, what if they had another way to say words? Her book charts attempts to get Stella to communicate using an augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) device, similar to the ones she uses with children who don鈥檛 speak. Hunger now claims Stella is 鈥渢he world鈥檚 first talking dog鈥�, and encourages others to coax their dogs to 鈥渢alk鈥� by pushing paw-sized buttons associated with different words.
One of the key apparent breakthroughs in communication came when Hunger was watering plants and Stella was watching her. The dog left the room and went to her AAC. There, she pressed the word Hunger had programmed for water. 鈥淚 started realising she might be able to use words for different functions, not just requesting something,鈥� says Hunger.
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Stella seemingly began combining words for the situations she was trying to communicate to Hunger. That, says Hunger, is evidence that Stella was engaging in communication, not being conditioned to hit a button when an environmental change occurred. Though others dispute this.
Stella is still developing her language skills, says Hunger. She is able to combine up to five words to create phrases and short, simple sentences. Stella uses her vocabulary every day, mixing up the words to communicate different goals to different people.
The success with Stella shows that we need to keep researching this area, says Hunger, because dogs are hearing human words every day and making associations. 鈥淭hey just haven鈥檛 had a way to say them themselves. As more and more people keep teaching their dogs, we鈥檙e going to discover this range is normal, just like it is with human language,鈥� she writes.
Not everyone agrees. 鈥淚t鈥檚 really cool what Christina did with Stella, and I think it鈥檚 awesome that people work on improving their relationship with non-human animals,鈥� Dirk van der Linden at Northumbria University, UK, told 麻豆传媒. 鈥淪tella doesn鈥檛 鈥榯alk鈥�, but she鈥檚 been trained to associate pushing a button with a particular outcome. That is still useful, and that鈥檚 a fair way for us to enable interspecies interactions. But let鈥檚 not confuse ourselves and say that animals are suddenly talking or understanding us, and let鈥檚 especially not confuse ourselves it is the animal鈥檚 duty to understand us.鈥�
Van der Linden worries that normalising the idea that dogs can communicate in a human-like way with us will encourage owners to demand that the pets rise to meet human level of communication, rather than focusing on understanding their animals.
Hunger stands by her findings. 鈥淚n the past year and a half, we鈥檝e seen thousands of people who aren鈥檛 speech therapists teach their dogs to use words as well,鈥� she says.
But getting your schnauzer to engage with the book rather than tear up its pages may be a way off.