Main image via LADBible
Dear dog (especially puppy) owners, many a time when your dog barks we’re pretty sure you’ve gone “what does he/she want now?”. But this speech-language pathologist came up with a genius way to let her dog tell her exactly what it wants! Cool huh?
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The Catahoula/Blue Heeler mix called Stella has learned to communicate basic commands with the help of a soundboard after being trained since she was just eight weeks old! Her owner, Christina Hunger said that now her 18 months old Stella can ‘say’ 29 words and even string them in a sentence!
Image via Instagram
We are awestruck!
“The way she uses words to communicate and the words she’s combining is really similar to a 2-year-old child”, she said in an interview.
Christina keeps her followers (or Stella’s) updated via her Instagram account! You can basically see Stella’s growth from the videos she posts.
You can watch a few here:
Her favourite words are ‘walk’ followed by ‘beach’. Hmm, we’re not surprised but what you’re about to read will leave your mouth open in amazement!
Christina said she was so surprised one day when Stella was standing by the door and whimpering. After a bit of pacing back and forth, Stella went to her artificial ‘voice box’ and said ‘Want’, ‘Jake’, ‘Come’, indicating that she wanted Christina’s partner, Jake to come home. To her surprise, Jake really came home in about 15 minutes and Stella said the word ‘Happy’!
Christina hopes to expand Stella’s word use in the future to see how many more words or phrases she can master!
We wish her all the best. Excuse us while we go and figure out if our dog wants to pee or go for a walk.
Oh wait, it probably just wants food. What if it’s sleepy?
We think we need a soundboard for our doggos too!
Do you think it would work, though? Or do you think this is a good idea in the first place to teach animals to sound more like humans than themselves?
Info via LADBible
