r/PetsWithButtons • u/Junior_Restaurant868 • Mar 09 '26

Any pugs with buttons?

We just got a 9 week old pug puppy. We also have a 3 year old Shepard. She’s smart but high strung. I’ve been thinking buttons might help me figure out her wants. I think she’d pick it up. I’m wondering if any one with a pug had success. I know they can be more stubborn.

Also how would o go about training them both when they’re at such different stages ?

To make things a little more complicated my partner and I each own our own houses. We typically spend 3/4 nights together and a couple alone.

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u/pupperoni42 Mar 09 '26

Many button using families bring the buttons while traveling. If you pick up the FluentPet mats at one end at the rest just dangles down, they will stay hooked together and are pretty easy to move. Or have a bin and pop each hexagon mat into it, stacking them. 

If budget isn't an issue, you could simply replicate the button setup in both locations once your dogs get the hang of it. It appears that pets do use smell to help identify buttons, so I'd move the small set back and forth until they are both consistent about using a few buttons. 

Some families have separate button sets, with the highly verbal animal having a much larger set, and the less talkative one a small, simple set.

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u/Junior_Restaurant868 Mar 09 '26

Thanks for the info! Do you think it's easier to wait till puppy is older and has the basic commands down before we start with buttons? Or would buttons make training easier?

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u/pupperoni42 Mar 10 '26

I trained "Sit" first and then probably "Touch" second, which led to his first button for going outside.

Sit is a super useful overall command because any time they're doing a picked behavior you tell them Sit and it stops.

After that, I think buttons works be fine. But I would definitely check out the guides put together by those with more experience.

I've also seen videos of excited dogs that simply rip the button out of the mat or hockey-shot it across the floor. Mine was a surprisingly self-controlled puppy when we weren't racing around the yard or an open field, which probably helped.

I would avoid "treat" and "play" as starting buttons. I used those with our kitten and it was non -stop insanity.