Well, not yet.
I’ve watched many videos of people teaching their dogs and cats to use buttons to say words.
Some of them are quite amazing.
So I ordered some.
Does anyone have any experience with this?
I don’t expect Bayliss to recite or have deep meaningful conversations.
He’s very smart and almost communicates any way he can.
Is this a fool’s errand?
Woof. Woof, woof!
Translation: Beck, are you talking about me online again?
“Scratch My Stump! Scratch My Stump! Scratch My Stump! Scratch My Stump! Scratch My Stump! Scratch My Stump! Feed Me! Scratch My Stump! Scratch My Stump! Where is that Possum? Scratch My Stump! Scratch My Stump!”
Have Bayliss recite Samuel Jackson’s Go The Fuck To Sleep.
This may be all you get.
I somehow missed this one, and never seen it. It’s fucking killing me! 
That bottom dog is a Dachshund, for sure!
It’s one of my all time favorite Far Sides.
You yoo-haas!! I want Bayliss to press a button that says “love you” or “treat” or my favorite “smash!”
I tried that with my cats, but you need more energy to devote to it than I had. ADHD doesn’t perform behavioral modification well
I gots time on my hands.
And boredom to spare.
Or…
I’d say yes.
Your cat/dog communicates with you and lets you know what they want. They are pretty good at it.
Having them press a button is just a different version of what they would do otherwise to let you know what they want.
It is not a conversation.
No reason not to do it then. No harm. Might be fun. Certainly cute.
Really not true. Some of the thoughts these dogs have expressed are pretty deep. And they put their words together to express other concepts, which totally floored me.
One I saw, her “beach” button was broken, so she hit “mad” a few times and then “water” “outside.”
Another one, he kept hitting “sound” and “tug.” It took his owner a while to get it. She kept offering squeaky tug-a-war toys. But no, he was trying to say “talk” like let’s have a chat. So she gave him a “talk” button and he started using it right away when he wanted her to work on communicating with him.
Another (Bunny the poodle) got really interested in what type of animal she and her owners were. She really objected to her being dog and them being human. (although she was fine with her brother being a dog. LOL!) Anyway. After a couple of days of talking about this she hit “Mommy” “was” “dog” “question.”
I think she was hoping she might be human when she grew up. Any way you slice it, that was clearly an existential conversation.
Another time she let her owner know that “rain” “tomorrow.” The weatherman disagreed, but Bunny was right.
Then there was the dog who complained to her Dad about the smell of Mommy in the bathroom.
What scares me about this is just how smart the dogs turn out to be. If I ever have another dog, we will definitely be getting the buttons from day 1.
I thought this notion of animal communicating was debunked with Koko the gorilla.
It’s not that they do not have intelligence (they most certainly do) and they (animals other than humans) also certainly have an emotional spectrum.
But they really do not have language as humans think of it.
They communicate. No doubt about that. But training them to push a few buttons is not really different than them communicating other ways (a proffered paw, giving you “puppy eyes,” rolling over for a belly rub, snarling, growling and body language like hackles raised, tail between legs, etc.).
Most people become very attuned to their pet’s communication.
One of those channels put together a montage of all the times their dog said something about ‘poop’. It was a major topic.
Bunny is pretty amazing when she says stuff like “dad, sound, upstairs” when she hears the husband moving around in his office above her, but the humans are also adding a lot of interpretation a lot of the time.
Bunny’s Mom wrote a book about it. They’re also being studied by some human speech pathologist.
I’m not saying they don’t edit creatively. But it does seem there’s a lot to that dog.
I do think Bayliss has things to say. I’m going to try it and see. He’s clever with his paws and watches every thing. Sometimes he just looks at me with questions in his eyes.
LOL! This does not surprise me. ROFL
Gorillas have not lived intimately with humans for eons and evolved (and been purposefully selected) for their ability to cooperate with us. Of course dogs are better at language than apes.
Have you ever raised a dog? They learn lots of words you didn’t mean to teach them. Creatively referring to things they like without alerting them is always a family joke. “Arborial rodents” and “Canine municipal green space” were a couple of ours that the dog figured out.
My personal take is that these animals can and do communicate with humans using these buttons (or signs). But that humans very often fill in a lot of the gaps.
Still, there does seem to be some level of additional communication going on in the ability to quickly combine symbols to convey a combined idea. A cat I sometimes watch will push the mad button, but then also push another button to indicate what is making them mad. For example, they once said “cat” + “mad” to indicate that a cat was making them mad. Another time, they chose “dog” and “quiet” when a dog was barking.
I’m sure that it would be possible for them to convey this information in other ways. But using the symbols humans already use can make it easier to decipher.
But what it isn’t is language, which requires syntax.
Does the cat always hit the “mad” button first, then the explanation? Because if so, that is a form of syntax.