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#fluentpet
I'm really angry at people exploiting that valid means of communication for the clicks and views, and ultimately profits. Casting skepticism on all of us.
So, the scam part.
I do believe that some of the videos are by people who are scamming.
I believe some of the videos are by people who may be under the influence of wishful thinking and projection. Anthropormorphizing.
I am skeptical of dogs that talk about their dreams or when to expect rain.
For the number of buttons we had, for the words my dog already knew from our daily lives, they worked. They were not a scam.
So I kept using button vocabulary, with her and Kai, who never got the hang of buttons, and with every dog I had care of after.
She got over not having buttons.
Sophie's personality was such that if she wanted something, she ENTHUSED at me. She got all excited to get my attention. And it was obvious how disappointed she got when I just didn't get whatever she wanted me to know. The buttons really helped us both with that. When they worked.
I felt betrayed by FluentPet. I presume she felt betrayed by me, since I controlled her whole life. I couldn't take the heartbreak.
When people are training their dogs to use buttons, the manner of verbal speech changes to focus on the words the dogs already know from the course of their lives. Instead of saying, "Sophie, do you need to go pee?" or "Sophie, do you need to go out?" I started saying, "Sophie, outside?"
Talk with the button vocabulary.
I taught my dog to do something and the both of us took great joy in this. To have it suddenly fail, and keep failing until more can be shipped out, was devastating to her.
I had taught my dog to do something that gave us both huge joy. When that started failing, and kept on failing until the next shipment arrived, Sophie took it a lot harder than I did. The betrayal.
She was making me understand, and the means suddenly vanished.
Sophie was up to 7 buttons. Outside, Walk, Park, Play, Water - crap, I am forgetting the other two. But we got a bad batch of buttons that died after a couple months instead of lasting two years.
FluentPet replaced the buttons for free, but those died too. We repeated this a couple times and then I gave up.
I was feeling defensive. Of course I am still grieving. It's almost a year since Sophie died, a few years since I gave up on the buttons project. Not because she couldn't do them, but because the buttons kept failing.
We were enrolled in the university study (I now forget which university is/was doing the study) where we had to upload our spreadsheets of how well our animals (there were a few cats, a couple birds, and a cow) were using the buttons.
Yeah this is a sub-toot.
A few fays ago someone posted about talking dogs with buttons being a total scam and I got All Up In My Feelings.
Thanks to my 12-step program, I now know to Pause, then Respond rather than React. Give myself time to see where this is coming from, why I feel this way, and whether I'm actually being attacked or not.
Because, of course, I am not.
Feelings are not facts. Feelings are dashboard lights.
Ember has a couple of requests after we returned home from our walk.
Interested in animals who use buttons to communicate? Skeptical? Want to learn more? I warmly invite you to join me this evening (March 19 at 8:00 PM ET) for an interview with Bunny the Talking Dog and her human, Alexis Devine, author of I AM BUNNY. https://www.eventbrite.com/e/mary-robinette-kowal-hosts-book-club-with-alexis-devine-tickets-856081903017?
A very exciting thing is happening*! 
* at sone unspecified point probably months from now, assuming I can teach Zoe what to do, right now it’s just a very indulgent thing.
@kcarruthers Someone has suggested we start one as they can’t find much - #PetButtons - hope it catches on. Have found a handful of posts using the brand names #FluentPet and #HungryForWords
I have belatedly gotten round to setting up my first few #FluentPet buttons for teaching #SingaporeGangsterCat how to talk.
I have never seen him so uninterested in anything in my life. Oh well, it's only day 1.
I heard about these things from @maryrobinette's talented cat Elsie, and the very readable book How Stella Learned to Talk by Christina Hunger. https://fluent.pet/
I'm a big fan these days of videos of "talking" cats. They've been trained to use sound emmitting buttons assigned words to communicate. It's fascinating to watch over time as they develop skills. One of my favorites is Elsie, cat of writer (and many other things) @maryrobinette. Though I usually watch on #Instagram but you'll find at least some some of her videos on Mary Robinette's timeline. Go watch. We'll discuss.
#talkingcatsofmastodon #fluentpet #catsofmastodon #cattricks
Here's a video of Elsie being upset that my husband is out of town. #fluentpet #catsofmastodon
We all have Advent calendars this year, including Jack. Every night before we open them, we read a devotional and sing a song. Jack has figured out this routine and gets VERY EAGER for his treat during the song, as pictured here.
Last night we mixed up the order and sang before we read. The whole time we were reading, Jack was alternating between barking at us and pressing his EAT button. He really wanted us to skip to the end, already!!
yerald Is anyone else on here doing augmentive interspecies communication training (aka talking with buttons) with their animals?
How's it going? My cats currently have eight words, but they use them VERY RARELY, although they react to our use (verbal or buttons) very distinctly, & it has actually eased some challenging behaviors quite a bit. It's also made clear that they think very little of our ability to follow feeding schedules.