I’ve been seeing a dog food ad that includes one of those pads with the buttons that talk, I was curious to hear about them from people who actually have them.

  • hedgehogging_the_bed@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    About a week from setting up Button #1 “Go For A Walk” and us pressing it before we go for walks to my 5yo rescue mutt pressing it himself when prompted “Do you want to go for a walk?” After about a month he was always hitting the button before we went out but often would come bother us in his old ways (nosing under our hands, whining, pawing at our feet) before he would hit the button to get our attention first.

    We added “Puzzle” in month 2 because he only gets treats when he solves a “puzzle” (mix of dog puzzle toys and treat stuffed Kong). That one caught on immediately.

    We thought he was getting them mixed up because he would give us all the signs we used to interpret as wanting to go out like a yawn and stretch, hit both buttons, and then stand next to the puzzle basket like we were dumb. We moved the two buttons really far apart.

    The reality is he wants puzzles because he’s bored far more often then he ever really wanted to walk, he’s down from 4 walks a day to 2 once we started to trust that he really knew what he was telling us.

    We added a “Food” button but he never used consistently because he understands the meal names “breakfast”, “lunch”, “dinner” better then the word “food” for mealtimes. We serve meals at the same time every day anyway so we eventually took the button back up because he never used it.