How Stella Learned to Talk: The Groundbreaking Story of the World's First Talking Dog

by Christina Hunger

Stella walked to our pantry, raising her head up to sniff the lowest shelf filled with cereal boxes, bread, and crackers. I crawled over, attempting to redirect Stella away from the food. “Stella, look!” I crawled back to the door and pointed at the button. She looked back at Jake, over to me, back to the pantry, straight ahead to the door. She might have glanced at the buzzer, but she definitely did not look at it intentionally. I slowed down my rate of speech, articulated each and every syllable, and paused in between every word I said. “Outside,” I said both verbally and with her button at the same time. “Outside. Let’s go outside!” Stella stared ahead at the closed door, still unaware of the new addition on the floor. I pushed the button to hear “outside,” once more and promptly opened the back door. “Come on, girl!” Stella followed me, trotting down the three steps that led to our yard. “Yay! Stella outside. Outside!” Jake joined us. “Is that normal?” he said. “It seemed like she wasn’t paying attention.” “It’s okay. It takes time for kids to pay attention to a device or watch what I’m doing. So I’m sure it’ll take time for Stella, too. At the very least, she’s still hearing the words I’m saying and making associations between what she hears and what happens next.”

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