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

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

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

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

by Christina Hunger

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Overview

INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

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.



Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780063046863
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date: 05/04/2021
Sold by: HARPERCOLLINS
Format: eBook
Pages: 272
Sales rank: 423,147
File size: 7 MB

About the Author

Christina Hunger, MA, CCC-SLP, is a speech-language pathologist and the first person to teach a dog to “talk” using augmentative communication. She is the founder of Hunger for Words, a movement dedicated to giving everyone who understands language the tools to communicate. Hunger has a graduate degree in speech-language pathology from Northern Illinois University. She has professional expertise in using Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) to teach children with speech and language disorders to talk using communication devices. She lives with her husband, Jake, and of course her dog, Stella.

Table of Contents

Prologue 1

Chapter 1 Presume Competence 3

Chapter 2 Ozzie and Truman 19

Chapter 3 The Chocolate-Colored Puppy 29

Chapter 4 Communication Is Everywhere 37

Chapter 5 Three Feet from Gold 53

Chapter 6 Now We're Talkin' 67

Chapter 7 Independence 81

Chapter 8 Project Disconnect 95

Chapter 9 Bye, Omaha 109

Chapter 10 The Road to California 123

Chapter 11 Using Words in New Ways 133

Chapter 12 Creative Combinations 145

Chapter 13 Help! 159

Chapter 14 Becoming Automatic 173

Chapter 15 Hunger for Words 187

Chapter 16 Language Explosion 203

Chapter 17 Hello, World 221

Chapter 18 This Is the Beginning 233

Appendix A Helping Your Dog Learn to Talk 239

Appendix B Resources and Recommended Reading 249

Acknowledgments 253

Notes 257

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