My dog Scooby and I first saw Christina and Stella on YouTube shorts and watched in amazement. Scooby is a few years old and loves watching TV with me. He enjoys dog shows and animated movies and we watch animal documentaries together. I've always thought of Scooby as more than our family pet and call myself his dog mom.
Seeing Stella use her buttons is quite inspiring. I remember saying to Scooby I wish we had buttons to talk with. Over the years Scooby has learned to go to our front door when he needs to go potty and he scratches the bottom of his water dish if it's empty to signal that he needs it refilled. After looking more into Stella and her ability to talk using her buttons I decided to buy some buttons for Scooby. I then realized I had no clue how to start introducing buttons or what words to start with. So I was so grateful and excited when I found this workbook.
Christina is a licensed speech pathologist who not only works at home with Stella but also works with children in a clinical setting. I trust her advice and teaching tips in this workbook because I've seen her work with Stella.
My husband and I started teaching Scooby with four buttons to start. We followed the tips in this workbook and can honestly say Scooby is using one of his four buttons to say the word "ball". It didn't happen overnight and it took consistency. I have highlighted and wrote down so much of Christina's advice from this book. We're hopeful that over time Scooby will use more buttons. We couldn't have got this far without this book and we're looking forward to being able to use more of the intermediate level skills one day. Christina gave us the tools and confidence to start this journey and we're so grateful.

I received this book complimentary through Netgalley in exchange for my honest review.

I wish I had this years ago! I loved how Christina shared a bit of how this idea came to her for Stella, her background in speech pathology and even things she's learned that has helped in both areas. This was easy to understand and broke things down in a way that makes it a lot less intimidating! I loved that parts included workbook style content but still offered examples to help you along the way. This takes you from complete beginner to advanced but also gives you several options for everything from how to set up your buttons to what words to start with.
I got a few button mats a few years ago to try to teach my dog that has since passed away how to communicate with the buttons but I felt like I was thrown into the ocean and never got anywhere with them. There is a lot of info out there but I never felt like it was easy to find something that was like "okay, let's start here..now go here"..and beyond. This also helps clear up a lot of the questions and mistakes you might be prone to make, so you can avoid making them before you even begin.

While I don't have a dog that I can start this with right now, I am looking forward to having this knowledge for the little paws that come next. I feel like I'm better prepared to dive in with buttons!

Big thanks to Ten Speed Press and NetGalley for the eARC! This will be published on August 12, 2025!

Oh, how I wish I had this book in 2018.

Honestly, the button phenomena that has taken over the dog world these days has always been of heavy interest to me. My dog, a Border Collie with a ridiculously high level of intelligence, has always been exceptional in communication. Even without buttons, his ability to recognize what he needs to do or vocalize in order to tell us what he wants or needs has always amazed us and I cannot help thinking that we truly failed him in some ways by not getting buttons for him sooner. But the thing is, I never had a genuine understanding of where to start and how to help him with this process.

Christina Hunger’s <i>Your Dog Can Talk</i> feels like the diamond in the rough that I’ve been searching for. And I say this all knowing that it’s incredibly bittersweet for me, since Mickey at six years old was diagnosed with a brain tumor and probably would not be here today if we hadn’t stepped in to get him treatment. And I cannot help feeling that he has been so cheated; what if he’d had the ability to communicate so much more with us for his short life? It feels horrifyingly depressing to know that I’ve gotten buttons to him in an intentional manner so late in the game.

But the truth is that it took a matter of hours setting up the buttons with words Mickey already knows for him to get the hang of things and begin communicating with me. He’s got eight buttons right now and while he very much skips using bedtime and potty (he prefers to push outside and play), he took to this extremely quickly even with the change that his tumor has made in his brain. It feels sucky for me that I have to acknowledge that what I’m learning here, both from this book and from Mickey, himself, will likely be utilized much more with any dog we have in the future.

Mickey will be seven this month and I’ve already purchased more buttons for him. Likely, I will get a physical copy of Christina’s dog button handbook when it officially comes out. As an educator who works very heavily with students who have diagnoses and am at least tangentially connected to the world of speech language pathology, it was thoroughly unsurprising to me that this brilliance was discovered by someone working in that field. This is truly an exceptional gift for dog lovers and dog parents everywhere and I’m exceedingly grateful that, even though Mickey is accessing this intentional button knowledge at a late stage, he’ll have the time to communicate with us in a manner that is, hopefully, incredibly rewarding to him.

Truly, from the bottom of my heart, thank you Christina.

I loved this book! It gave detailed information, but in an approachable, conversational manner. I've seen articles and posts, but this takes the subject beyond that.
We have a dog training business, and I'll recommend this to our clients.
If this is something you've thought of, get this. Even if you haven't, get it...it's an interesting topic.


Thank you to Clarkson Potter/Ten Speed Press and NetGalley for a digital ARC of this title in exchange for my honest review. All opinions are my own.

#NetGalley #TenSpeedPress #ChristinaHunger #YourDogCanTalk