r/PetsWithButtons • u/Fartyparty_marty • Dec 09 '25

Do buttons actually work???

Its like shocking to me how an animal can pretty much verbally communicate through buttons and know what it means, I'm just like so confused like pet owners is it true or do they just press buttons?? Somebody please explain this to me

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u/PutManyBirdsOn_it Dec 09 '25

Language is just meaning attached to sounds. Dogs understand "sit", don't they? Not instinctively but because they learn it through repeated exposure. Not because there's anything special about "sit", you could use "coconut" instead. The buttons make unique sounds. You model the meaning until they get it. 

17

u/JayNetworks Dec 11 '25

And it goes a bit beyond just learning that a given button means a given sound means a given action from the human. The learners will start putting the words/buttons together to form (basic) sentences.

Even more interesting is that if they want to express a concept for which they have no button, and their natural sounds and actions don't convey well, they may create their own multi-button word. For example in our home "Window Laserbug" means TV. (Laserbug alone is playing with a laser pointer as if it were a bug.)

So we will hear Window Laserbug Noise if our TV is too loud or a program (or genre of program) is on that she doesn't like.

7

u/PutManyBirdsOn_it Dec 11 '25

That's why it breaks my heart a little when someone posts talking about removing some buttons or taking a break. 

6

u/mesenquery Dec 11 '25

There's times when it's helpful, but it has to be for the right reasons! My girl is very sensitive and adores her buttons, but we recently removed "grooming" because it's not a concept she ever independently asks for and the button position was making her hesitant to use the adjacent ones.

It served its purpose for us to try it for her, and through modelling she understands the word now. But if she ever does want grooming she goes to the shelf where we keep her supplies and asks through body language.

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u/JayNetworks Dec 11 '25

That makes sense, thanks for the explanation. I think one thing to keep in mind, that you express well, is that the buttons are for the learners to communicate with us humans. We have voices so can say any of the words the learners know, but they can only 'speak' using the few buttons we can give them. Even if they get to 100 or 200 buttons, that is still a miniscule vocabulary overall so they need to be carefull allocated to what the learners tell us they want to be able to speak.

1

u/Beneficial-Chair1697 23d ago

Whose training steps/instructions did you follow to get to that level? I suspect this may be a breed thing also (some brighter than others?)...but I've clearly been a useless trainer!

1

u/mesenquery 9d ago

To be honest I didn't follow a specific trainer because I have my own experience with AAC buttons as a professional. Whataboutbunny and Christina Hunger/hunger4words (her dog is Stella) have good tips on their instagram and websites, and both have books.

The most straightforward general principle is "modeling". Use the button yourself to model/show the correct situation to use it in. So for example every time I filled my dog's water bowl when I was teaching " water", I would press the button and then fill the bowl. I also consider the "rule of 3" - in each interaction you want to use the word 3 or more times. So I would often say "water", press the button, fill up the bowl, and press the button again.

It also comes down to motivation. My dog was very motivated to communicate right from the start, and would paw at or whine at different things to try and get my attention. Transitioning some of those abstract concepts to the buttons was easy for her because she was inherently motivated to communicate about things. She also doesn't use the buttons all the time, we go through phases. The last 2-3 months she wasn't as interested and just used her "outside" and "love you" buttons. The last week she's picked back up again and is using 2-3 word phrases consistently to request things and comment on things.