E215: 알렉시스 드바인(Alexis Devine) - "버니에게 말하는 법 가르치기"

And then I started studying training techniques. And, you know, I was sort of on the fence. Maybe I want to take her to a training school or maybe I want to do it myself. And then as I got started, I was like, well, this is really, really fun. And what a beautiful way for us to engage and get to know each other and build trust. And so, yeah, I just have been learning as I go and doing as much as I can. And it's been a really fun and beautiful process. And I've learned a ton along the way. How old is Bunny now? How long have you been working? She is just shy of two years. She's about 21 months old. She's still a baby too. She's learned a lot. Yeah. So what are some of the words you've been able to teach her? You know, have some been easier than others? Any particularly difficult ones? Yeah, for sure. We started with words that were pretty simple to model. So we've got outside, which is, you know, pretty clear cut. You have a button by the door, press outside. You let them outside. It's like teaching a dog to ring a bell, right? And then we added play, which is another one that's super easy to model, and some of her toys. And then we started working on some more abstract concepts like feelings, like concerned and love you and mad and happy. And now we're at very abstract concepts. We have introduced pronouns. We've introduced times of day, yesterday, today, tomorrow, like the word is. So things like that have been a real sort of a puzzle to figure out how to model in a way that she might begin to understand them. And it's taken a lot of creativity. And, you know, I went into this sort of having no expectation of success because, you know, I'm not a dog trainer. I'm not a speech language pathologist. And, you know, I really had no idea what I was doing. But I found that Bunny really enjoys it. It's a really wonderful way for us to engage. And as long as we keep it fun and interesting, she feels comfortable exploring and making mistakes. And we learn together through that. So it's been a really, really incredible thing to watch. Yeah, I can imagine it would be pretty hard to convey pronouns if you're not actually listening to somebody talk. I and you and... Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I can't imagine how... I don't have any human children, but I can't imagine how human parents teach children pronouns. It's so confusing when I think about it. And I started to try and imagine, like, how... This doesn't make any sense. How am I supposed to model this? But we went on a week-long road trip just recently. And we decided not to bring the buttons because we were going to be camping.

We were going to be in pretty remote places. And it just didn't make sense. And, you know, I was curious, is this going to set her back in her progress? Is she going to forget everything she's learned? And what I found is that when we came back, she was more eager to explore. She started using her pronouns a lot. She started using buttons that she hadn't touched in a long time. So I thought that was really interesting. That is really interesting. To kind of take a step back for a second, I know you kind of mentioned Stella in there. But what really kind of caught your attention about that stuff? What made you really interested in teaching Bunny how to talk? Well, I just... My goal from day one was just to have the most connected relationship possible. And so I wanted to introduce as many opportunities to have that connection. You know what I mean? And I thought, you know, so I'm going to do obedience training. We'll do trick training. We'll do like some nose work. We'll just experiment all of these ways that we can engage together and learn together and grow together. And this just seemed like another natural way for us to increase our engagement and communication. So fun. So you mentioned kind of teaching the outside button. What did that, you know, that early process look like? What did some more of that early training look like kind of after that first button? Yeah, so after she got comfortable with the outside button, was using it, you know, regularly to request to go outside, we took that button, we added it to a plywood board similar to the one that Christina Hunger uses and started adding more buttons. And, you know, before she was comfortable with all of them, I would be modeling one button at a time, getting her used to that in context. And then once she was comfortable pressing one button to request, you know, play or walk or outside, I started modeling two buttons. So at that point, I could model like play ball, for example. And then we would play with the ball. And then I would, you know, while we were playing with the ball, I would model play ball, play ball. And then, you know, want to play outside. So once we were comfortable with two word phrases and she was using two word phrases to request things, I would add in a third word. And the more sort of complex the word is, the more important it is to model it contextually with other words that she knew already, right? So for like want, for example, want, play outside. Because modeling the word want by itself doesn't have a lot of contextual meaning. So that's sort of how I went about doing it.

I think there are a lot of people going about this in very different ways and a lot of people having success. But that's how I figured it out. When you say model, do you just mean, you know, kind of pushing the button and then making the action happen for her? Or can you just kind of break that down for me? Yeah, exactly. So modeling would be pushing the button, saying the word, and then performing the action. Gotcha. Okay. How often these days are you introducing new words? More slowly at the moment. We talked a little bit about my road trip and how much growth she's had since then. But before that, she was kind of like at a plateau. She would go into sort of the center of her console, which is like a little NASA console. And she could quite comfortably with, you know, one paw on either side reach the buttons that, you know, would fulfill her desires. And she wasn't doing a ton of exploration. So I kind of slowed adding buttons since she wasn't using all of the buttons she had. But since we've come back, she's been so exploratory. She's all over the place, like making new word combinations. So I do have a few words that I'd like to add. And it really all depends on her. You know, if it seems to me like she's trying to express something but can't, I'll take a while to really think about what she might be trying to talk about and maybe add a button based on that. Sometimes the scientists that I'm working with help to inform what button I should add because they think it could be really interesting for the study they're doing. I didn't mention this before, but Bunny is part of a study that is currently going on at the Comparative Cognition Lab at UCSD. And there are over 2,000 animals in the study right now. The majority of them are dogs, but there are also a ton of cats. There's some horses, some pigs, a ferret, a guinea pig, I think a lemur. How cool is that? Yeah, it's a huge pool of data. It's going to be really, really interesting to see their findings. So what words are on your up next list? You mentioned there are a couple you're thinking about. Yeah. So I just added human, which is exciting. I'd like to add hot and cold because the temperature is starting to rise here and she's not loving it. And then when we were camping, it got pretty chilly and I could tell that she was a little cold. So I'd like to add some temperatures. I would like to add one, two, and many, like some numbers perhaps. What else do I want to add? I think those are top of the list right now, but you never know because most of them are inspired by her. So at any given time, she could be like, hey, I need this button. Yeah.

I mean, some of the videos you managed to capture for Instagram are just really fun to kind of watch and see how she's making use of her buttons. Yeah, for sure. Kind of along that line, what are some of the, I guess, more complex concepts that, you know, maybe have surprised you that Bunny's managed to convey? I think one of the most impressive for me was several months ago, my husband Johnny and I were downstairs. It was evening and Bunny was sitting with us and Johnny went out to go pick up some food, some takeout. And it was an unusual time of day for him to leave the house. And as soon as he left, Bunny walked over to the board and she pressed, we love you. Why went? And then looked at me. And that's crazy because each of those words in and of themselves is quite complex, right? We've got a group pronoun, we. We've got love you, which is a shared emotion. Why, which is a question. And then went, which is like a past tense verb. So all of those are sort of mind boggling in their own right. And then put together was quite stunning. And I was like, it's okay, Johnny. You know, you just went to go get some dinner. He'll be home soon. And she went back over to the board, pressed dad by, and then came and curled up on the couch with me. And I thought that was a really, a really sweet and kind of impressive moment. That's really pretty neat. She's managed to knit all those concepts together. Yeah, it felt, it felt pretty wild to me. And then there were several times last summer where she was able to tell me that she was in pain and specifically where, which is very impressive. We have an invasive foxtail here, which is this grass. And it has these awns with like barbs on them. And they can work their way up into animal circulatory system. And they require surgery pretty regularly in the summers here. And a couple of times she went over to the board. She was like, paw out or help mad stranger paw. And then would come over and put her paw in my hand. And I would go between her toes and find these thorns in there. And to me, that just feels incredible. If, if for no other reason, like the buttons are helping me to intervene before she requires, you know, medical attention, that's, that's spectacular to me. That is pretty awesome. I mean, we talk all the time with the, you know, the vets that we talk about in the show, how we can't tell when dogs are in pain most of the time. And that's clearly, you know, indicates that we can with a little bit of different training. Yeah, indeed. So talk to me more about your gear. So you mentioned the plywood board was kind of where you started.

I've seen, you know, over on Instagram, kind of the setup you've got now with these cool hex tile looking things and some buttons that sit into them. Can you, can you talk a little bit about kind of how you have things set up and kind of how you decide what words go where, kind of how you organize things for her? Yeah. So I, about six months into our process, came into contact with Leo Trottier, who is a cognitive scientist and he was creating a canine specific AAC device and he was looking for beta testers. And I was like, yeah, this is, this is awesome. I would love to have some of my decisions informed by science. And it seemed like a really great way to continue expanding the board, but have it not take up my entire living room. Cause these buttons are significantly smaller than the first ones I was using. Um, so that's the system we're using now. It's been through several iterations. Um, and they are all grouped based on the Fitzgerald key, which was developed in the early 1900s by Edith Fitzgerald, who was a deaf woman who, um, wanted to create a way to teach deaf children, uh, grammar and syntax. So each hex tile has its own word type. You've got people, places, things. Um, and so in this way, instead of, you know, seeing this giant mass of buttons and bunny having to say, okay, I know the word mom is somewhere in here. She can say, this is the tile that houses the people and mom is in the center of that. And so she can sort of compartmentalize where the types of words are to create, you know, ostensibly sentences in that way. For those who were listening to this and going, I kind of want to try this. Do you want to, do you want to share like where people can look for some of those resources and for some of, um, things like the buttons and the hex tiles and stuff, uh, where they can actually buy them? Yeah. So, um, the buttons and the hex tiles that I'm using are available through Fluent Pet. I have an affiliate link in my bio, but you can just go straight to the website as well. Um, if you're looking for, um, the larger buttons, those are learning resources buttons. Um, and Fluent Pet also has, um, they can talk.org, which is an excellent resource for getting started. There's a lot of troubleshooting, um, and sort of crowdsourcing of information over there. And I also have some getting started tutorials on YouTube that you can check out. Christina Hunger has written a book that's going to be coming out, um, early next month. So there are actually, um, a lot of resources available to learn how to do this. Awesome.

And then any final words of advice for, for those who want to try teaching their own dogs to talk? Um, you know, consistency, uh, lots of repetition, lots of patience. Um, and I think it's, it's smart to, to not really go in with any expectations. All, all dogs are different. Um, and I think the best way to sort of guarantee success is to really try and understand your dog first and, uh, to have great communication with them without the buttons. Um, that's going to set you up for really great communication with them. Awesome. Um, I didn't include on my list of questions, but do you want to share where people can go to see more about see bunny, push your buttons and kind of all the, uh, social handles? Oh, sure. Yeah. So it's a, what about bunny on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube. Awesome. All right. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast, Lex. And thanks to all of our listeners for tuning in. We'll be back next week. Don't miss it. If you haven't already subscribed to our podcast in iTunes or the podcast app of your choice to have our next episode automatically downloaded to your phone as soon as it becomes available. Today's show is brought to you by the Fendi Dog Sports Academy. Special thanks to Denise Fendi for supporting this podcast. Music provided royalty free by bensound.com. The track featured here is called Body. Audio editing provided by Chris Lang. Thanks again for tuning in and happy training. Today's show is brought to you by the Fendi Dog Sports Academy.