The front door to a house on a wide, leafy street opens and Stella greets me, tongue slurping my fingers, her tail wagging like a windshield wiper in overdrive.
Stella, part Australian cattle dog and part Catahoula Leopard dog, likes me. Or does she?
The 48 paw-size buttons on the floor in her house may reveal a more nuanced answer. Stella is the dog made famous in 2021’s New York Times bestseller, “How Stella Learned to Talk” and the star of “Your Dog Can Talk: A Step-by-step Guide to Button Training,” the follow-up book published Tuesday.
“If we get recognized, it’s only when I’m with Stella. She’s got the celebrity status,” says Christina Hunger, Stella’s owner and the author of the books.
Perhaps, but Hunger wants to make it clear that Stella doesn’t possess superdog powers. Any dog — young, old, blind, even deaf and blind dogs — can learn to “talk,” she explains in the new 181-page book ($16.99; Ten Speed Press).
Christina Hunger’s dog, Stella, sits in her home in Aurora, on Monday, Aug. 11, 2025.
“There is definitely a spectrum. It hasn’t been so breed specific as people might expect. It’s really just the personality of the dog, their relationship with their humans and how much consistency and effort the humans are putting into teaching,” said Hunger, while Stella dozed on her bed a few feet away.
Hunger was a speech-language pathologist working with children when she had a “light bulb moment.” To help her non-verbal clients, she used an iPad-like device with icons the children could press to express themselves.
Why not try something similar with her then-puppy Stella? she reasoned. “There was nothing like what I was envisioning out there,” Hunger said.
So, back in 2018, Hunger started by introducing a few basic words to Stella. She would say the word, then push a voice-activating button on the floor that repeated the word: “outside,” “play,” “water.”
Seven years later, Stella now has at her disposal 48 buttons fastened to a foam board — each corresponds to a different word — that she uses to create phrases and short sentences, Hunger says. In other words, “talk.”
Christina Hunger’s button training device, in her home in Aurora, on Monday, Aug. 11, 2025.
Just how sophisticated have those sentences become? She can talk about things that “aren’t right in front of her at the moment,” Hunger says.
One time, Stella’s bed was removed from its normal spot in the living room while the house was being cleaned. Confused, Stella hit the “where” and “bed” buttons, Hunger says.
Another time, after a squirrel had “tormented” Stella in the park, the dog, upon arriving home, smacked the words, “mad” and “park.” Hunger interpreted the message as Stella saying she was still upset about the incident.
Hunger, who is Midwest mild-mannered, no longer works with children. Managing the Talking Dog Movement is her full-time job (that, and being a mom to her children, ages 1 and 2). Besides writing books, she offers virtual dog training at $150 for a one-hour session (she’ll do it in person if you live nearby). She also has 720,000 followers on Instagram. She is a consultant on her product line. A basic bundle of talking buttons, with the mat, costs $49.99. Her husband, Jake, is the company’s chief financial officer.
“I’m flying to Vegas [this week] to go to trade show and speak there,” she said.
Christina Hunger holds her book, Your Dog Can Talk, in her home in Aurora, on Monday, Aug. 11, 2025.
To be sure, not everyone buys what Hunger is selling.
Alexandra Horowitz is a professor and the director of the Horowitz Dog Cognition Lab at Barnard College in New York City. Earlier this year, she told The New York Times Magazine: “Dogs already do so much to accommodate our lives. They’re on our schedule. They have to ask us if they want to urinate. They socialize on our schedule. They walk where we want to walk on a leash. … There’s something unknown about them, and that’s wonderful. Why do we lean into forcing them to wear clothes and speak our language?”
Hunger points to the work of Federico Rossano, a professor of cognitive science at the University of California, San Diego, who co-authored a widely publicized dog speech study in 2024 supporting the idea that dogs can use soundboards to “talk.”
“The findings reveal that dogs are pressing buttons purposefully to express their desires and needs, not just imitating their owners. When dogs combine two buttons, these sequences are not random but instead seem to reflect specific requests,” Rossano told U.C. San Diego Today.
Regardless of what the academics say, Hunger is confident she has the real-life experience to prove she is right.
Unfortunately, on this particular day Stella is walking with a limp. She recently tore one of her front paw pads while digging in the dirt. She doesn’t appear eager to do anything but lie on her bed, her nose touching a basket full of much-gnawed soft toys.
“Stella is a good girl,” Hunger coos. Hunger taps the buttons for “good” and “Stella.”
Stella gets up, limps over to the board and taps the “outside” button in the top left corner of the board. “Come on, we can go outside,” Hunger says.
Stella slowly makes her way outside, sniffs a bit and then heads back inside. She passes a collage of black-and-white family photographs, including one of her on a better day — eyes sparkling, tongue lolling.
Hunger presses the “love you” button. Stella wags her tail.
“It’s definitely different with new people here,” Hunger says. Earlier, I’d asked Hunger is she could ask Stella what she thought of her guest. “I can’t force her to say something,” Hunger said.
Stella remains mute. Then Stella taps the button for “bye.”
“If she is saying bye, she is likely telling someone to leave — or that she wants to leave,” Hunger says.
I stare into Stella’s chocolate-brown eyes, hoping for a clearer understanding of her intent. Stella, what are you trying to say?