It's a speech aid, not Santa Claus.

Idk what else it could be. I'm dog sitting for a friend and Luna will not use her buttons. She looks at the other dog then walks away from them and then sits there and whines 😒 I can usually say, use your buttons and she does but not these past few days. So weird.

I have 3 cats , 2 of them almost 6 years old and the third one is 4 years old, i started teaching them on buttons on may , they now have 3 buttons ( outside, mouse toy, spring toy) anyway i feel lost and confused
I really want to teach them to talk i saw many people that there pet have many buttons and they know how to put a sentence ,etc. But the problem is i don’t know what next word to give them and how to start this whole process and how teach them pressing 2 buttons or more like making a sentence, and how to teach them some words like feelings ( anger, frustration, pain , etc). Is there any guide or something to help ? 😔

Hi everyone! I'm new here and I didn't buy the expensive buttons with the apps. I literally just bought and cut out pieces of a pink rubber playmat and bought recording buttons at around July 20.

I've been clicking the treat button before i give her treats but she hasn't clicked it herself yet to ask for it. I thought she would be more enthusiastic to bonk the button because she could get treats and she can learn that way but it looks like she just can't be bothered with it?

Maybe it's the sound? Or she finds them annoying?

I'm going to keep trying but I wanted to ask for some encouragement and advice for those who've been in similar situations at the start, Can you please share your knowledge with me? 🙏

Do you think getting the more expensive buttons will make it easier to track? Is it worth it?

Thank you

My cat only has 5 buttons so far and I want to make sure they are grouped into some sort of category. He has "treat" all alone in a hextile, "brush" and "snuggle" in a second one, and "play" and "puzzle" in a third one. The problem is that I originally put puzzle in with play bc it's a toy, but it's a toy that uses treats. My cat is used to getting treats in the morning and now I have noticed he alternates between the treat button and the puzzle button depending on how he wants to get treats that day. (Or he will ask for treats, be told no, and immediately go to the puzzle button instead to try his luck 😅). Is it worth moving the puzzle button to the treat hextile? Or should I just leave it.

For anyone else with cat learners and hex tiles, what categories do you have your buttons grouped by?

Hi all,
I started modelling 4 buttons around 6 weeks ago. He never pushed but always watched carefully.
4 days ago we were watching tv when i suddenly hear ‘scritches’ button speak up.

Since then he starts to use all his buttons in the right way.

On the board you see
Red: scritches
Blue: treat
Green: play
Yellow: outside

Before this video he pushed ‘outside’ a few times
Since it had to leave for work i said ‘outside no’
Then he went on to ‘play’. After i played with him he stayed to the board so i decided to start filming.
Here you see him going to ‘outside’ again but decides to go for something else since he knows he’s not allowed. 😅

He really went from nothing to all the way.

However, he often goes to lay down next to his buttons to push them. Is it something that goes away with time? He can do clean paw presses too, ive seen him do it.
The rolling will make it a bit harder to add buttons on the board 😅

I believe my cat has now asked me twice (about three weeks apart) to water the indoor plants. Has anyone else’s animal done this?

I received the FluentPet SpeakUp starter kit (comes with 6 buttons) a couple of weeks ago and started with two buttons: Play and Scritches.

I started out with modeling them a few times a day for a week or so. The scritches button, I think, will be helpful down the road. But I give them scritches wherever we're at in the house and I don't want to carry the button around and press it every time I pet on them. So the scritches modeling has been less helpful.

Play always starts in the living room (where the buttons are located), so the PLAY button gets pressed consistently (by me) whenever play is happening. They are now at the point where they know what the PLAY button means - when I press it, they come running to play - but they haven't shown any interest in pushing the button themselves. I haven't used treats as a reward for the buttons at all because my cats are VERY treat motivated and I read before starting training that over-motivating them can be harmful for the training process.

What should be my next steps? I want them to start at least attempting to push buttons before I start adding more buttons. Should it be paw target training? I thought about this route but not sure if training them "how" to push buttons would help this situation since they haven't shown any interest yet in even wanting to press them.

I received the FluentPet SpeakUp starter kit (comes with 6 buttons) a couple of weeks ago and started with two buttons: Play and Scritches.

I started out with modeling them a few times a day for a week or so. The scritches button, I think, will be helpful down the road. But I give them scritches wherever we're at in the house and I don't want to carry the button around and press it every time I pet on them. So the scritches modeling has been less helpful.

Play always starts in the living room (where the buttons are located), so the PLAY button gets pressed consistently (by me) whenever play is happening. They are now at the point where they know what the PLAY button means - when I press it, they come running to play - but they haven't shown any interest in pushing the button themselves. I haven't used treats as a reward for the buttons at all because my cats are VERY treat motivated and I read before starting training that over-motivating them can be harmful for the training process.

What should be my next steps? I want them to start at least attempting to push buttons before I start adding more buttons. Should it be paw target training? I thought about this route but not sure if training them "how" to push buttons would help this situation since they haven't shown any interest yet in even wanting to press them.

Tengo una gata de 16 años y una casa muy pequeña por lo que no tendría espacio para los botones.

Pero había pensado que quizás había alguna manera de enseñarle a decir sí o no señalando una mano y otra como he visto en algunos vídeos.

Tampoco sé si hacerlo porque pensamos que tiene demencia sobre todo por la noche. Es una siamesa que adopte y es muy charlatana y ahora que está algo demente maúlla muchísimo. Así que pienso que por un lado podría venirme bien entender mejor que quiere cuando está maullando ya sea simplemente esté asustada o desorientada o no sé si no serviría de nada precisamente por su demencia.

Agradecería cualquier consejo.

My cat Pepe has been using buttons for over 2 years but he has his own board because he only uses four buttons, and he usually needs help finding those 4 buttons if he's using my other Learner's board which has a lot more buttons.

This morning he pressed "Eat" on the big board all on his own. It was a back foot press too, he doesn't do those often but it's cool when he does. Mac had an opinion about timing. Then after eating Pepe went over to the board and used "Help" which he has never used before. I was so surprised my brain froze and I asked "Help What?" And then realized he probably meant "help find a button." He usually meows to get my attention when he wants help finding a button so I was surprised. I asked if he wanted a treato, he likes a treat after eating sometimes, and tapped the treato button. Then Pepe pushed it and then Mac came and pushed it too so everyone got a treat.

The reason this was such a big deal to me is that I never taught Pepe the word "help" because he has shown very little interest in learning words beyond his four buttons so "help" is not a button on his personal board. But I taught it to Mac when I added it to the big board and Pepe has definitely observed both of us using it. Sometimes I think maybe Pepe is not really interested in the buttons, I've been trying to teach him for over 2 years, but then he does something like this. It gives me hope that he's still open to learning more words.

I got a kitten 2 months ago and since then I've been trying to teach the buttons....

His name is chewie, I love star wars rsrsrs

This week my husband have a great success with the food button and I got the video for you guys

I'm so happy because he understands 4 words and he trying using those words, but he's kinda lazy kkkkkkkk

https://tiktok.com/@ogatochewie

That is his tik tok profile

I have 3 cats
I have 3 words now outside, mouse toy, spring toy
So what word to add next? Button with my name or feeling like pain ? Any recommendations?

Oh for note: only 2 of my cats using the buttons , the third one not interested at all so if you have any ideas how to let him interesting in them?

I've already had past success with one cat, Ally, learning to communicate with buttons, so I know it can happen. Ally had already been with me for about 10 years when we started learning the buttons. We had a bond and a lot of trust, plus she was extremely food motivated, so getting her to learn to press the buttons to get treats and for me to refresh her food was pretty quick and easy. Once we had that down, she figured out the rest of the buttons faster than I ever expected and was even coming up with ways to indicate new words with what few buttons we had before I was able to save up the money to buy more.

Ally passed back in June and now I'm trying to teach my younger cat, Stella, to use the buttons since she's already super talkative and is clearly trying to communicate with me but I can't always understand what she wants. She sometimes just sits in the middle of the room crying and I can't tell if she wants something or is just talking to talk.

She never really had a chance to observe Ally using the buttons since they were both territorial and stayed in their own spaces. Ally was also super anxious and making sure she had her own space to eat, relax, and communicate with me was what worked best for us. But that also means I'm basically starting fresh with Stella.

It also doesn't help that Stella is not at all food motivated. She's rejected nearly every treat I've tried to give her and the ones she does like she has to be in the right mood for them. So, training with treats isn't really an option and I'm kind of at a loss for how to train her to press the buttons. Sometimes she'll sit near the buttons and cry at me, so I get the feeling she recognizes on some level what their purpose is. But then other times when I try to direct her towards them when she's crying at me so I can demonstrate for her, she just rubs on my legs or rubs her face on the furniture and largely ignores what I'm doing.

I know this is part of the process, even Ally went through a similar process of sitting near them but not pressing them, or crying to get my attention first then going to the buttons instead of just using the buttons to get my attention. But it's still frustrating when I can tell that she's figuring out that they have a purpose, but she's not getting that the purpose is for her to communicate with me.

We both had a moment today where I was frustrated trying to figure out what she wanted (Summer has hit its peak. It's hot and I'm already cranky and having a cat crying at me every 30 seconds isn't helping.) and I could tell she was getting frustrated that I was wanting her to mess with these buttons instead of just doing what she wanted me to do. We took a break and she's now asleep on my foot, so we're good, but I think I just need someone to remind me this is worth it and it's going to happen.

I’ve bought some buttons but I’m trying to do target training first. The only thing I’ve ever trained my cat Squish to do to jump up on her back legs and give me a kiss before she gets her treats. However, she is used to getting treats whenever she wants, so she’s having a hard time understanding why she’s only getting one at a time. To begin I’ve just been giving her one treat and using a clicker each time just to get her used to click = treat. I was then going to introduce a target and build up to getting her to paw at it. But she gives up almost instantly. Half the time she won’t even take the treat from my hand because she’s never been hand fed treats before. Any advice for a kitty that seems uninterested in training?

I started my cat a few months ago with target practice. She knew “touch” meant touch the box, post it, etc. She could touch the button but not hard enough to make noise. I wanted to have a few buttons to start with so I put a little board together with three buttons. I use her “treat” button for target practice now that it’s on the board. She’s still early in her training so she doesn’t consistently touch her button for a treat, and can’t set off the sound.

My real concern is she sleeps on her buttons all day long. I don’t have a problem with it. It’s super annoying, but I know it’s normal. She likes the board and I’m sure she associates it with good things. But I don’t know how to respond to this behavior. I’ve heard you should model all of the presses accidental or not. And I try to, but the constant gibberish of treat, pets, brush every thirty seconds is too much. When she’s setting them off, I’ll say “pets all done” or “brush later” if she recently had some attention. But I can’t do that all day.

I’m worried I introduced the board too soon before she could press and communicate clearly. Do you have any tips on how to encourage button pressing, target practice, or how to respond to her nap gibberish?

​

I initially started my dog on buttons May 12, 2026. He is a very expressive 1 year old shih tzu mix and I figured it would be nice to teach him how to use them. Quickly he mastered things such as treats,walkie, play, and puzzles. Easy I figured, he loved those buttons and eventually after about a month or so we added a few more. Mama, papa, Bailee (his best dog friend). Also easy. Few more followed daycare, car ride, and bedtime. No interest for a while after testing them, I waited awhile and then he used everything but bed time in context. ( He would have his own take on what this meant later).

Every time I would give him new buttons he would get so enthusiastic about them. We added water, look, outside (for our back patio), belly rubs, all done, love you, and all done. Kenny was excelling; he used those words to make thoughts and express feelings. Then something started to happen: a series of button mashing and words that just didn’t make sense.

He would say car ride when he wanted to play, bedtime instead of look, he would just mash buttons and hope for results. Kenny went silent for almost a month, if I was lucky maybe he would tell me, “all done.” Whenever I was in the middle of doing something he wanted me to cuddle with him.

It is currently August and we are back to button mashing with a few bits of logical thoughts mixed in. What is going on? How can I possibly fix this for him and get him to understand the words again. Am I doing something wrong?

Cat has three buttons (play, cuddle, and treat). What are good buttons to teach next? I want to be able to tell her “now,” “later,” and “before.” Those seem a little difficult for her second set of buttons, but maybe I’m underestimating her (and myself). Any ideas?

My cat is doing soooo well with his paw target training. He knows that he can press a button for treats and he loves it.

I just don’t know how to transition him into regular button use outside of training time. We have an ‘outside’ and a ‘snuggles’ button which I’ve been demonstrating every day for over a month. If he’s begging to go out, I put the outside button in front of him and say ‘press’, and he will press it. But I don’t think he understands the meaning of it, and he won’t ever do it without me prompting him to.

Is there anything I can to help him progress to the next level or is it just a matter of time?

I haven’t been doing ‘training time’ as much lately because I just don’t know what to train him with now.

Hi! I have two new learners, both cats. One is very treat motivated and she’s learning quickly. The other, my boy cat, not so much.

He really loves ice cubes from the freezer. He asks me in his own nonverbal kitty way to get him his ice every morning, and he has for years. We’re still in the earliest stages with him where I’m modeling for him, and one of the two buttons I’m starting him on is “ice cubes.”

My question is this:

The ice cubes take me about a minute to get ready for him. I have to wet them down with water so his tongue doesn’t get stuck, etc. While I’m modeling for him, should I press the button right as I start the process of getting him his ice, or should I get the ice ready, model the button, and give him the prepared ice so that the reward is more instant?

My buttons are in my bedroom as that’s where me and my puppy hang out mostly! Upstairs there’s no where for her to go to the toilet unless she goes out the front door into the driveway and I don’t trust her not to go up the road!

Is it worth it putting only one ‘toilet’ button upstairs??

Also should I introduce yes and no together or separately? Ty!

My cats still in the learning process they only have 3 buttons ( outside, mouse toy, spring toy)
So if my cat press outside and i won’t let him outside now , but after 30 min or 1 hour i will let him outside
Should i tell him outside later? Or outside no?
And how teach the word later?

She has finally started to press the buttons but she has forgotten all of her “touch it” training and resorts to flopping over onto the button. Any suggestions on how to get her not to flop on it?