Want to teach your dog to talk?

A speech pathologist can show you how

Over a year into the pandemic, your bookshelves may be so crowded with books that you can’t imagine adding another. But a 3-year-old dog named Stella will have you rethinking that. Not familiar with the brown pup with a white belly, a mix of Catahoula and Australian cattle dog? She’s quite the social media sensation, with 788,000 followers on Instagram, 101,000 followers on YouTube and 28,000 followers on Facebook, and now there’s a book dedicated to all that she’s learned in her short life. Stella can communicate with humans using a device created by her owner, Christina Hunger.

In “How Stella Learned To Talk,” Hunger, a speech pathologist, takes us through her journey teaching Stella how to

talk via augmentative and alternative communication. AAC is a tool that gives people with severe speech delays or disorders the ability to say words through another medium. The skills and tools she used to help children communicate, Hunger has applied to Stella’s communication development.

“All I wanted was to be able to share this story in its entirety and help people see Stella’s communication from my lens as a speech therapist,” Hunger says.

She programmed “recordable answer buzzers” with words like “play,” “outside” and “water,” then added “walk,” “bye,” “help,” “no” and “come.” These days, Stella knows and uses 48 words or phrases (including “love you”) on a board through which she communicates with her owners. She can combine up to five words to create unique phrases, ask and answer questions, express her thoughts and feelings, make observations and participate in short conversations. For example, Stella used the phrases “help, beach, love you” to ask her owners to take her to the beach. She then pressed the buttons to make the phrases “love you, water” and stood next to her beach collar.

And this all started when Hunger asked what would happen if she tried the language interventions with her puppy that she used with her young human clients at a clinic in Omaha, Nebraska.

In the book, Hunger draws on her language techniques to take readers through major life shifts with Stella at her side, concluding every chapter with takeaways for those who want to teach their dog to communicate. Hunger said she’s received thousands of emails from pet owners with questions about her “Hunger” method, which she hopes the book answers.

“I wanted people to understand the whole story because I think when there’s something so new and groundbreaking like this, you have to be in the person’s perspective and understand how it came to be what it is now,” Hunger said.

Art right, Christina Hunger and her dog, Stella, play at Gregory Island Dog Park in Aurora, Illinois.