INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER STARS OF THE PBS NOVA DOCUMENTARY CAN DOGS TALK? “Christina Hunger trained her puppy to use words in a meaningful way. She was amazed that language learning in her dog was similar to that of a young child. The results speak for themselves. A wonderful book.” —Temple Grandin, author of Animals in Translation A revolutionary true story and surprisingly simple guide from speech-language pathologist Christina Hunger on how to teach your dog to talk using simple, paw-sized buttons When speech-language pathologist Christina Hunger first came home with her puppy, Stella, it didn’t take long for her to start drawing connections between her job and her new pet. During the day, she worked with toddlers with significant delays in language development and used Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) devices to help them communicate. At night, she wondered: If dogs can understand words we say to them, shouldn’t they be able to say words to us? Can dogs use AAC to communicate with humans? Christina decided to put her theory to the test with Stella and started using a paw-sized button programmed with her voice to say the word “outside” when clicked, whenever she took Stella out of the house. A few years later, Stella now has a bank of more than thirty word buttons, and uses them daily either individually or together to create near-complete sentences.