“Walk now please:” How Dogs are Learning to Talk

Using speech therapy soundboards, it appears that doggos are mastering the art of human communication.

Photo by Jamie Street on Unsplash

Stella the dog can talk, or at least, that is how it seems on her Instagram feed. Her favourite words are, predictably, outside, food, and pets. To say them, she presses down on a soundboard, a floor mat of buttons each of which emits a different pre-recorded word. Stella, a chocolate-coloured Catahoula and blue heeler mix, is absolutely adorable and from the videos, appears to genuinely have learnt how to speak, or at least, how to use words to communicate her needs. She has wooed the internet, and now has 790k followers on Instagram. I came across her videos on Facebook and was immediately obsessed. Is Stella the dog really talking? Or does her owner just make it seem that way by cherry-picking videos?

In one clip, Stella is watching somebody outside on the sidewalk, and presses on buttons to say “who outside?”. Another, filmed when Stella was coming back from her evening walk with owners Christina and…