Christina Hunger: Owner of the World’s First Talking Dog
Manon Lever
Christina Hunger is a speech pathologist who rose to fame through her Instagram account @hunger4words, where she shares videos of 2-year-old Blue Heeler/Catahoula Stella. However, Stella is not just a pretty face. She has a vocabulary of over 45 words which she can combine to express complex thoughts, feelings and requests.
Christina’s first book, a touching tale of how she taught Stella to talk, is out in bookshops today.
Manon Lever
Can you explain how Stella talks?
Christina Hunger
Stella uses an AAC device which stands for Augmentative and Alternative Communication. She presses down on a button that says a word with voice output. She learnt to do that through me teaching her to do that with speech therapy techniques and she remembers where each word is on her board with motor memory, so she learns the location of the word and can hear the word when she presses the button and then uses those buttons as words to communicate her wants and needs and thoughts about what’s going on in her environment.
ML
Is there something specific about dogs which makes them suited to this kind of communication?
CH
I think they’re so social and so motivated to communicate and to be with humans. I see that as a huge reason why they can be so successful, because dogs have evolved with humans for so long and they’re living in the same environment as us and they’re hearing and understanding words and they just need a different way to be able to say them.
ML
I’ve seen a couple of people have a go at cats- I get the impression that they have the intelligence but are too independent.
CH
I wouldn’t be surprised if cats could also learn, but I think dogs are far more socially motivated. That’s such a huge part of language. When I work with toddlers, the biggest indicators of how close a child is to really using words is their social skills. That’s the huge part with dogs that’s so similar - their social nature.
Christina and Stella. Photo from www.hungerforwords.com
ML
How many buttons does Stella have now?
CH
She has close to 50 now.
ML
Do you think her vocabulary is going to be limited by her spatial memory as opposed to her capacity to learn vocabulary?
CH
Absolutely. I think even just logistically, just figuring out how to have so many words for her is even limiting her vocabulary. I’m not sure if you’re familiar with Chaser the Border Collie, who learnt over a thousand different toy names, but that just shows that dogs can understand so many words, and I wonder a lot if Stella had the ability to say hundreds of words or a thousand, what kind of sentences and phrases would she be creating if all of those were actually available to her.
ML
So are there any words that she has to improvise around because she just doesn’t have the right button?
CH
Absolutely. We don’t have a word for ‘towel’ but we use towels a lot to dry her off after baths and playing on the beach. There’s been a couple of times where she’s been wet and she’s pressed “blanket outside” to request a towel, which is so cool that she can figure out a way to communicate about a word she doesn’t have a button for.
ML
Is there anything she has a meaning for that is different from the real meaning?
CH
We just moved and live in a house now instead of an apartment. This is the first time since she was a puppy that we actually have different rooms- before we just had a studio. I’ve noticed now she’s using ‘outside’ to even talk about going into a different room, which has never occurred before. She’ll say “outside” and stand by a closed internal door, so I just introduced the word ‘open’ so she can talk about going somewhere else in the house.
ML
If she wants to go outside, does she still use her body language, or will she always use her buttons?
Stella using her ACC device to communicate.
CH
I would say 95% of the time she will say ‘outside’ first, and she’ll sometimes accompany it with standing by the door. If we haven’t gotten there quick enough she’ll stand by the door, but for requesting ‘outside’, ‘eat’, ‘play’, ‘water’, some of those basic functions, 90-95% of the time, it’s her [talking] first, paired with body language.
ML
Has she had other dogs in the house around the AAC buttons?
CH
Only a couple of times. We stayed with my parents a couple of times and they have a dog and we had the device with us. Stella would still use her board to communicate to the humans and then she would use typical ‘dog language’ to communicate with the other dogs in the house.
ML
So she sees AAC as a human tool and can differentiate it from her dog language?
CH
She’s still very vocal. It doesn’t seem that way because whenever she’s using her board she’s not vocalising at the same time, but when we’re playing outside or we’re with other dogs, she’s really vocal and I think she’s so communicative now and has so many forms of communication. That’s something I’ve been really interested in, because with AAC in humans, all the research shows, when kids use communication devices to talk, all forms of their communication increases. So their gestures, and even their verbal speech. People would think it’s the opposite, but in reality, when a child has success in one area of communication, they all grow. That’s what I feel like is happening with Stella as well.
ML
How do you go about introducing the more abstract concepts, like emotions?
CH
I notice when Stella is already demonstrating what we attach to the meaning of that word to be. For ‘mad’ for example, it’s really obvious when she’s mad. She’s whining, she’s stomping her paws, you can tell by her body language that she’s upset with us. So I take those opportunities to put a word to it, so I’ll be saying “Stella is mad”, “you’re mad”, and I model just like I would anything else. With ‘love you’, anytime I was giving her affection, or she was being particularly affectionate towards us I would put a word to that “love you Stella”, “love you Christina”, “Jake love you”. There’s no way to know for sure she was perceiving these words the exact same way as we are, but that’s the same with each human too.
ML
I hadn’t thought of that. I was wondering if she thought that ‘love you’ meant scritches, but I suppose humans all perceive language in different ways too.
CH
That’s also something that working with kids has taught me so much about. There are so many times where a toddler says a single word and I have no idea what they mean, but their mom knows the entire story they’re trying to tell, because they’re there and they’ve shared the same experiences. But to an outsider, I have no idea what this kid is trying to communicate, but someone who knows their patterns more is able to identify their story with that single word. Even if we don’t understand the full meaning right away or it takes time to understand the full meaning of what Stella is saying, that’s totally normal with kids too. It’s part of language development.
ML
How does Stella express emotion when she uses her buttons?
CH
She changes her tone by the force and frequency. If something is urgent, she’s “outside outside outside outside”, several times and with a lot of force. If she’s really amped up about something she’ll slam on the button and she might bark right after she presses it to add emphasis, and when she’s calmer it’s just a normal tap and she carries on. That’s been really interesting to see too, just how she uses the buttons changes based on her mood, what she wants to communicate, and the degree of urgency.
ML
It sounds almost innate, because that’s not something you ever taught her.
CH
I never modelled pressing the button a bunch of times in an urgent situation. Even just conversational skills. Sometimes when Jake and I are talking she’ll come over and use her board but if we’re talking to her she’s listening to us and then we’ll walk over and use her board. So even that conversational back and forth is so impressive that she’s been able to pick up.
ML
What’s the most surprising thing Stella has said?
CH
One of the craziest things to me was when her beach button broke and she said “help water outside” to communicate that, which was something we’d never practiced. There was never an opportunity for that. She found a way to communicate such a complex situation that had happened with three other words. So to me she was letting us know that she needed help because her beach button was broken and the fact that she used ‘water outside’ as another way to say ‘beach’ was so complex on her part.
ML
To think of synonyms is very impressive.
CH
She does that other times too. If we say no to something, she’ll ask in a different way which is really funny. She’ll say “park” and if we can’t go right then and we say “not now, later”, she’ll say “play ball outside”, she’s trying to find any way to communicate what she wants if we aren’t able to say yes right away, which is so impressive.
ML
And to end, can you share what Stella’s next word is going to be?
CH
Some more vocabulary related to living in a house. Just some words we never had use for before. Something about ‘upstairs’ and ‘downstairs’ and different rooms would be really helpful for her, because right now she doesn’t have a way to communicate about other spaces in the house.