STOP SCROLLING: Can Dogs Actually Talk With Buttons? The Wild Science Behind Soundboards

Can dogs talk using button soundboards—or is it just clever conditioning? A new documentary special digs into the science behind the viral craze

Are you guilty of these dog-training slip-ups? We asked Mikkel Becker—a certified trainer and behaviour consultant and head trainer for Fear Free Pets (fearfreepets.com and fearfreehappyhomes.com)—for the top five mistakes she sees dog people make. She happily shared her nix list. Mikkel uses positive reinforcement and non-force-based strategies rooted in the science of learning theory to help pets and their people live better together through kind training and bond-building.

Can Dogs Talk Using Buttons—or Is It Just Conditioning?

Dogs, as they say, are man's best friend. If you've ever daydreamed that your four-legged pal might one day speak, you're hardly alone. While dogs talking like people is biologically impossible, fresh tech is making verbal chats possible.

Meet Stella—the Dog Who Started the Talking Button Movement

Meet Stella, the Catahoula–Blue Heeler mix and viral star who's been hitting buttons to 'talk' with her owner Christina Hunger for nearly eight years. The pair feature in the new NOVA one-hour special 'Can Dogs Talk?' where Hunger—also a TikTok star and author of How Stella Learned to Talk—and her dog take center stage.

When they’re in that sniffing mode, reading the messages other dogs left behind or following the trail of critters who scampered through the grass moments before, it lights up their brain’s pleasure centres and gets them problem-solving and tracking scents. We may be in the moment, but dogs ‘see’ far beyond us. They aren’t only taking in what’s visible now—they may be sensing a far richer world than we do, a woven pattern of animal, human, and other scents lying beneath the surface (sometimes literally, like a denned critter your dog digs to unearth). In a sense, dogs can experience past, present, and future at once, thanks to their amazing nose for who was there, who is here now, and what may be drifting on the wind next.

“For dogs, it’s not about mileage—it’s all about the shared experience.”

Applying Techniques Used with Non-Verbal Children

Hunger first got the button idea from her day job as a child speech therapist. Most dogs know simple words and linked actions like 'go out,' 'walk,' and 'sit'—but her years with non-verbal kids pushed her to take it further.

'Kids are so often underestimated when they can't speak with words, and finding another way for them to communicate was my job—often that meant a device where you press a button and it says the word aloud,' she says.

Around when Hunger brought home puppy Stella, she was petsitting a friend's dog who'd ring a doorbell to signal a need—though it took a while to puzzle out what, exactly, the request meant.

The training process mirrors early childhood language development:

'I remember a lightbulb moment—why not have a different tool for each need? If dogs get words, why can't they say words through a device?' she started wondering. That's when she noticed Stella's style echoing toddlers right before they start talking.

Illustration by Victoria Scobbie

Getting Started With Talking Buttons

'She'd bark for my attention like a child would cry, and she was starting to get words…and I just looked at her thinking, if she were a kid, I'd expect her to start talking soon—but dogs can't talk. So what's next?' Hunger says. With few resources to build tech, she bought recordable buttons and tested them, taping words for things Stella might want—food, water, outside.

'The first two weeks, she didn't even glance at the buttons or at me when I used them—but from my kid work I knew interest can take a long while to spark.'

Can Dogs Form Sentences and Express Emotions?

Four weeks in, Stella showed she could understand and 'talk' with Hunger via an initial three buttons—but over time, Hunger saw Stella use them to comment on something rather than signal a need. For example, instead of just hitting water to ask for a refill, she'd press it when Christina watered plants. That showed Stella using 'water' for something beyond her own need.

'So she used water to talk about me watering my plants, not when her bowl needed filling. I was like, oh, she's just pointing something out,' Hunger explained. In the years since, she's had two kids—and found Stella now uses the buttons to ask where her son Max is.

Stella's untrained knack for seemingly using buttons for general chatter was 'significant,' Hunger says, and pushed her to add more words—eventually growing her vocab to 48.

In the film, Stella uses buttons to share feelings, once hitting 'love you' to Christina, who replies 'Love you, Stella.' In another clip, Stella alone at home presses 'Where?' seemingly asking where her family went. 'We left one day and set up a camera to see what she'd do,' Christina says in voiceover. 'I'd never heard her make a sound like that'—the crying Stella made. 'It was heartbreaking.'