How Stella Learned to Talk
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4.8 • 18 Ratings
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
An incredible, revolutionary true story and surprisingly simple guide to teaching your dog to talk from speech-language pathologist Christina Hunger, who has taught her dog, Stella, to communicate using simple paw-sized buttons associated with different words.
When speech-language pathologist Christina Hunger first came home with her puppy, Stella, it didn’t take long for her to start drawing connections between her job and her new pet. During the day, she worked with toddlers with significant delays in language development and used Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) devices to help them communicate. At night, she wondered: If dogs can understand words we say to them, shouldn’t they be able to say words to us? Can dogs use AAC to communicate with humans?
Christina decided to put her theory to the test with Stella and started using a paw-sized button programmed with her voice to say the word “outside” when clicked, whenever she took Stella out of the house. A few years later, Stella now has a bank of more than thirty word buttons, and uses them daily either individually or together to create near-complete sentences.
How Stella Learned to Talk is part memoir and part how-to guide. It chronicles the journey Christina and Stella have taken together, from the day they met, to the day Stella “spoke” her first word, and the other breakthroughs they’ve had since. It also reveals the techniques Christina used to teach Stella, broken down into simple stages and actionable steps any dog owner can use to start communicating with their pets.
Filled with conversations that Stella and Christina have had, as well as the attention to developmental detail that only a speech-language pathologist could know, How Stella Learned to Talk will be the indispensable dog book for the new decade.
Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook.
Customer Reviews
Just Amazing!
This book is written with such an innocent, tender humility it was amazing. What I’d love to say to the author if I could: I really appreciate that you’ve done all the hard work it takes to research, learn and train an animal, and go cross-species no less, and found a bridge to cross and “meet” a nearly alien consciousness! It boggles the mind. I recall avidly reading or watching TV when they first began working with chimps to do sign language, then working with great apes, teaching them to speak! I was filled with wonder & excitement when they had success teaching them to communicate. To exchange thoughts & ideas through words! Then it was Dolphins. Now it’s your success with Dogs! You’ve been able to share thoughts and leaned that they too have ideas & feelings!
So if we can follow this natural progression to allow that if we humans have feelings, look into mirrors & know that we are Sentient beings, then it must follow that all animals are too. Something I believe we’ve known or suspected all along. And here you’ve proven it, if I may go so far as to say. And there can be no higher calling, in my humble opinion, than the work how you do with children & now with animals. I just wonder what you’ve really done. I’m so grateful I might be around long enough to see where this inter-species meeting of the minds takes us. Forget ET! Thank you, thank you, thank you! Please never stop being so fabulously curious!
T.S.Early
Everyone Has a Voice!
I can't even put into words how I feel about this book. I love language and I love dogs. I've been around many SLP’s and their incredible desire to change the world is inspiring.
Then there is Christina. The bravery and innovative thinking of this young professional is AMAZING. Christina and Jake I truly believe you have and will continue to change the world.
Stella is just the beginning of the possibilities to come. A true inspiration about what can be. This isn’t a story about a talking dog. This is a story about possibility and giving everyone a voice.
All Done.
Mark Orr