Dog video: Halley speaks; there was a squirrel!

Halley uses her word board to talk with me.

This is a cart-before-the-horse post. As in, I should have written about Halley and her word board long before today.

But life has a way of getting in the way. So I shall write about Halley’s talking journey another time, and when I do, I will link it here.

A TL;DR (“Too long; didn’t read” for folks over 50)  version is that I’ve had word buttons for the dogs since back when Jasper and Lilah were still with us. Halley figured out how to use the buttons so fast that Jasper and Lilah never bothered; Halley became the spokesdog for everyone.

After we went from three dogs to one in just a few months, and while I struggled with the loss, it was challenging for me to focus on working with Halley and her words. Still, trying to think positively, I bought a new set from Fluent Pet, which meant I could add a few more words to her beginner vocabularly. Then I bought an upgraded version just this past summer: one that tracks Halley’s words through an app. This newer set stayed in the box right through the fall.

It wasn’t until Halley injured herself yet again that I decided to focus on her word board. She is the most intelligent dog I’ve ever had the pleasure to know, and she was so very bored with the activity restrictions I had to impose on her. I knew she was a fast learner, so I brought out the new Fluent Pet Connect set, threw a bunch of new words on her board, and did absolutely no training. She just figured it out and has been talking up a storm since.

Halley can’t look out the sliding glass doors on to our deck. 

Back in December, we papered over the bottom part of our sliding glass doors and blocked Halley’s access to the bench under our picture window. This was because Halley would see a squirrel on our deck, zoom into the family room, leap onto the bench, bark at the offending rodent, run back into the kitchen to see if it was still on the deck, zip back into the family room, all the while telling us that There Was A Squirrel. It is important that we know. Because. There Was A Squirrel.

The bench that Halley likes to jump on is now blocked by her crate and a few other things.

Halley had two soft tissue injuries, affecting her iliopsoas in the back left leg (basically a groin injury to you and me) and something with her hock in her right front leg. Literally the worst thing she can do is leap on furniture (like the bench), which would re-injure her psoas as she overextends it, or jumping down off of furniture, which could re-injure her front leg, as she lands on it. 

When I added the new buttons, I decided to add “Squirrel” to Halley’s word board. I thought maybe she would no longer feel the need to run and jump and bark if she could just tell us, through her buttons, that There Was A Squirrel. 

I know she knew the word, because we’ve used it many times, as we’ve been working with her in trying to reduce the unwanted back-and-forth-and-barking-and-jumping-because-there’s-a-squirrel behavior. If there was a squirrel outside, I would look at it with her and say, “Yes, that’s a squirrel,” and Halley would be rewarded with a treat if she looked away from the squirrel and back at me instead of running and barking. While we did make progress before she injured herself, she still struggled with it. I mean, she’s a terrier. And There Was A Squirrel. 

Anyway, I just threw a bunch of new words on her board, without telling her anything. She watched me do it, and over the next few days, she tested the new words out, seeing what resulted when she pressed each button.

But Halley doesn’t have much of a chance to see squirrels, unless she gets a glimpse of one high in the tree through the family room window, or if one just happens to be around when she’s outside. So I thought it would be a long time before she used that button. 

But my smart dog doesn’t just tell me what she wants. She wants to tell me about her day. And even if it’s not there right at this moment, There Was A Squirrel. And she wants more squirrel. When it becomes clear it won’t happen, she comes up with an alternative ask. Check out this video:

Does your pet talk to you? Even if they don’t use a word board like Halley, what are they telling you?

You might also like: 

• Text from Dog: There was a squirrel
• Text from Dog: Squirrel Duty
• Squirreling it Away
• When a terrier can’t be a terrier; keeping my dog entertained while on restricted activity
• Text from Dog: To bark or not to bark
• Text from Dog: I. Can’t. Even.
• Text from Dog: OMG! Deer!
• Text from Dog: The mailman’s here!
• Text from Dog: Deer, deer, deer
• Text from Dog: Full report

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