How Stella Learned to Talk

How Stella Learned To Talk is a non-fiction book by American speech therapist, Christine Hunger. The author provides a few anecdotes of her work with children, and describes her experience dog-sitting for a friend whose pets had been trained to ring a bell when they needed to go out.

When she and her fiancé, Jake discussed getting a dog, they initially rejected the idea of a puppy, but fell in love with a Catahoula/Blue Heeler puppy, which they named Stella. Christina saw parallels between the language development of toddlers and the behaviour of young dogs, and wondered what dogs might want to say if they, like humans, had access to the tools to express themselves.

Eighteen months, a lot of patience and persistence, and some recordable buttons later, and Stella uses nouns, verbs, names, adjectives, and question words to tell Christina what she wants to do, where she wants to go, when she is thinking about Christina, what they are doing, what she likes, when she is mad, when she is happy, when she needs alone time, when Christina and Jake are being good, to answer questions, to ask questions, to participate in short conversations, and to make her own unique phrases every day.

On the author's website, readers can see video of Stella using her device. The book contains teaching tips for those who want to teach their own dog to speak, as well as a list of resources, recommended reading, comprehensive notes and eight pages of colour plates. This is an utterly fascinating read.