‘Talking dog’ expresses feelings by pushing buttons goes viral on social media

A three-year-old Labrador retriever has learned how to express her feelings by pushing buttons to communicate with her human. Meet Copper and her owner, Tia Herrell, 52, a speech pathologist, who has been working with her dog’s skills; covering a range of desires, needs and emotions from being hungry, thirsty, go outdoors for potty time to coping with her dog’s real or perceived anxieties.

And so Copper has become accustomed to using augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) which utilizes buttons on the floor. Methods of communication such as these have routinely been used in cases of humans having speech problems as has been well documented by the famous physicist Stephen Hawking.

The California duo convincingly demonstrate via short videos on TikTok videos how Copper is able to communicate by pressing buttons on a “Risk” type of motherboard where Copper can ask questions as well as express concerns, fears and daily needs as simple as, “it’s dinner time” or “can we go for a ride?”

So let’s tune into the ChattyLab on TikTok for an example:

Her TikTok videos are so expressive and interesting; more than one million tune in to follow. Viewers asked lots of questions; perhaps the most common question was how long it took to teach her, to which Tia replied that she started with just a few words, and as she learned them, she would add more.

Of course, there are the people who believe Copper was learning too much, but Tia doesn’t seem worried and explained how enjoyable it has been to watch her dog mature and even appreciate her dog’s preferences changing as she grows older. More skeptical people have labelled Copper’s “talking” as extreme anthropomorphizing.

He just knows they make noise which gets your attention. There is no physical way a dog can put together a sentence.

TikTok

There are diverse thoughts about gauging dogs’ intelligence. According to the Washington Post, the director of the Thinking Dog Center at Hunter College stated dogs have been “talking” to us, but humans haven’t been listening.

I guess we will just have to wait and see.